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Al Franken Makes a Case For Net Neutrality
jomama717 writes "In a post titled 'The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time' this morning on The Huffington Post, Senator Al Franken lays down a powerful case for net neutrality, as well as a grim scenario if the current draft regulations being considered by the FCC are accepted. Quoting: 'The good news is that the Federal Communications Commission has the power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality. The bad news is that draft regulations written by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski don't do that at all. They're worse than nothing. That's why Tuesday is such an important day. The FCC will be meeting to discuss those regulations, and we must make sure that its members understand that allowing corporations to control the Internet is simply unacceptable. Although Chairman Genachowski's draft Order has not been made public, early reports make clear that it falls far short of protecting net neutrality.'"
Because politicians have such a wonderful grasp on technological issues. The only technology they understand is which side of a TV camera to stand in front of.
And most are already predisposed to completely tune him out.
In their minds, it just makes net neutrality another one of those kook bag non-issues, by association.
Well, technically you can at least adjust the government if you don't like it.
There's no such chance with companies, unless you happen to have enough money to control them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Stop spreading FUD. Net Neutrality is about preventing corporate control, not granting government control.
Living With a Nerd
yeah, about that.... the govt track record is so much better.
Is anyone supposed to get upset because a bunch of sites selling knock off products get shut down? It's funny how slashtards constantly say the government should go after the real "pirates" and yet when they do, as in the case you quoted, you still find something to bitch and moan about.
What, they shut down websites with little oversight and even shut down legitimate sites? Yeah - who would care about that!
False dichotomy much?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
So you've never heard of "voting with your wallet"? Though come to think of it, we kind of do that with politicians, too.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It's easier to control companies. Just don't purchase their services. There is a reason Enron doesn't exist anymore...
Don't be a tool. This isn't an either-or situation where we get either oppressive government control or oppressive corporate control. Ground rules simply need to be laid that the corporations can operate in which bar them from abusing consumers.
Simply declaring them Title II carriers would help, since they'd be blinded as to the content and unable to bill piecemeal or throttle abusively. As it is Verizon, AT&T et. al. will get their way and we'll be left with a broken wireless internet that serves entirely the desires of the corporations providing access and not the people who actually use it.
That's nonsense. I've voted for a decade in California and have zero say in what the other 51% of the population wants to do against me. When I vote against a company, I stop buying from them immediately and that's an end to it.
I'm amazed at what delusion the rah-rah-government live in.
Amen. Saying that corporations will control the Internet is really saying that consumers will control the Internet, since corporations must comply to the demands of the consumer (reference Montgomery Wards, A&P Grocery, and Yahoo for companies that did not). Government does not need to listen to what the consumer has to say, especially if the politicians can blame bureaucrats for making the rules.
It's no surprise that someone in government wants government to control the Internet. What's surprising is that well-educated people want government to do that, too.
Studies have shown that 'knock off' sites actually create more demand for the 'legit' products. People buy the knock offs because they can afford them, and then when they can afford it, they buy the 'legit' stuff. By having knock offs in existence, it makes the legit stuff that much more attractive.
The fashion industry is rife with ideas being stolen...and yet it thrives. It forces the designers to make something new and exciting every year.
Imagine if software companies didn't sit on their past accomplishments, but continued to innovate such that they were selling *new* things every year? The idea that MS takes *years* between releases of Windows and Office is completely shredded with the speed that Windows 7 came out. Why? because Vista was such a dog that people weren't going to wait for another few years and MS would have lost market share. Hence they rolled out Windows 7 and by most accounts it is pretty stable. They can do it faster and better but were forced to in this instance.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
You guys are so funny it is ridicules. This FCC is run by liberals for liberals. This is Obama's FCC. He is not interested in anything but control. If you think for a minute that people like Franken give a rip about an open free internet, you are absolutely crazy. I tell you what, I would much rather have Corporations control the internet by providing ISP services that have any government at any level involved. But your hero from Wikileak has messed with the worlds Governments and believe it or not he is not supported by the masses. If and I say if cause I hope cooler heads will prevail, the governments of the world take control of the internet, you will have him and all his supporters that acted like a lawless mob to blame. Get use to it. He called the tune, the piper will be paid.
Government is a monopoly - no choice. Corporations are multiple choice - if you don't like one (google, yahoo, sony, microsoft, youtube) then simply choose another.
The only reason government should interfere is in the case of a monopoly, such as the electric monopoly, phone monopoly, or local Comcast monopoly. In places where there is no monopoly (grocery stores, carmakers, wireless internet/cell providers) there's no need to interfere.
As for "early reports", the FCC Chair has said in a speech some of his ideas include making us acquire licenses to setup websites, yanking those same sites w/o a trial if they do something undesirable (which just happened last month), applying a fairness doctrine so that when you visit msnbc.com, you also get a big popup asking if you want to visit foxnews.com too..... and so on.
It violates free speech, free press, and free expression. Liberty works best without limits.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What, they shut down websites with little oversight
And you have proof that they were selling couterfeit goods due to lack of oversight rather than doing so purposefully, right?
and even shut down legitimate sites?
Such as?
Yeah - who would care about that!
Other than criminals, I can't really tell since you've provided all of zero evidence that any legitimate sites were shut down.
Who would have known he would be a great senator?
We need more like him in government.
Net Neutrality needs to be passed into law and guaranteed.
How about rep/senator term limits as well? Too long in government just lets the corruption and malaise sink their claws deeper.
If a president can only have 2 terms then why shouldn't Senators?
So you've never heard of "voting with your wallet"?
Perhaps many people could do so in the form of choosing a different one of the total one broadband provider in their area.
Yeah, what about the "we aren't pressuring you but we are" from Libermans office to Amazon over Wikileaks? Which was evil there? Or will we just pretend it doesn't exist since it doesn't help the cause.
And yet, you've not linked a single one.
Studies have shown that 'knock off' sites actually create more demand for the 'legit' products.
And yet your post is suspiciously absent of even one citation.
He is the only politician I don't hate. I don't hate too many things but lawyers and politicians [normally one and the same] are my 2. I think because Franken was not a lawyer before becoming a politician is why he seems to actually care about what is going on. The rest? Just there for a way too big paycheck [and not always from uncle sam]. I nice quote of his from a while back Sen. Al Franken: "I May Not Be A Lawyer, But Neither Are The Majority Of Americans" Gotta love this man.
What about the fact that Wikileaks was violating the TOS of Amazon's services?
The ONLY way to stop corporate control of something by a small group of companies with lobbying power is not to regulate it. End of story.
Any other ideas are pure fantasy. As we can see with the notion that "Net Neutrality" is awesome, just not THIS specific regulation. Get real, any regulation written is going to benefit someone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
with little oversight
federal agents then obtained a court order to seize the domain name.
Seriously, just stop -- you're offtopic and just wrong.
meep
Even a congressman can understand this would be like putting up toll booths on the Interstate highway system, another government-initiated open network. Doing such a thing would slow throughput and leave the door open for selling off parts of the network operation to private firms that would then gouge the consumer.
On second thought, maybe Franken should first lobby to remove toll booth from the Interstate highway system.
You've been modded insightful, but you've not read the ideas coming out of the FCC. Their idea of net neutrality would indeed mean government control - such as the idea the UK Government proposed to block all porn (even nudity) unless the customer specifically asks for it. The FCC also discussed applying the Fairness Doctrine to the web, and 3 strike rules to ban customers for downloading songs (no need for trial - just do it).
I trust corporations more than I do a Monopoly (government). The only time government should interfere is in the case of a utility monopoly like the phone, electric, water, or cable company. But in the case of yanking websites like foxnews.com or msnbc.com (as suggested by Congressman Rockefeller)??? That's taking it too far, but that's what these guys wish to do.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Net neutrality is an issue because Internet access has become a near-monopoly service. Few people today buy residential Internet connectivity from someone other than their monopoly telco or monopoly cable provider. For both of those monopolies, Internet access is a tie-in sale - both want to sell customers a "bundle" with telephony, video, and Internet connectivity. In some areas, there's only one provider.
We've already lost one deregulation battle - the right to use any ISP you want over the monopoly telco wires. The FCC changed the rules on that back in 2003. Until then, telcos had to provide raw DSL connections from an ISP to a customer at prices no higher than they charged their own internal ISP. Once the FCC dropped that, the ISP business became a monopoly.
Further back, telcos used to be regulated common carriers. We lost that back in the 1990s.
"Net neutrality" is the last stop before total monopoly control.
Wireless doesn't help. "Deregulation" also allowed wire-line and wireless carriers to merge, which is why AT&T is back in the cellular business. Nor does cable/telco competition. Mergers in that area are coming. In the end, you'll have one connection to the outside world, with a boot ready to step on your tube if you get out of line.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/10291211924/the-19-senators-who-voted-to-censor-the-internet.shtml
The idea that MS takes *years* between releases of Windows and Office is completely shredded with the speed that Windows 7 came out.
Vista release date: January 2007.
Windows 7 release date: October 2009.
Difference: About 2.75 years.
It would seem your own example demolishes your point.
Is anyone supposed to get upset because a bunch of sites selling knock off products get shut down? It's funny how slashtards constantly say the government should go after the real "pirates" and yet when they do, as in the case you quoted, you still find something to bitch and moan about.
You are overloading the term "pirate" - selling knock-offs without identifying them as such is fraud, not "piracy" as the MAFIAA and most 'slashtards' use the term.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
What I cannot get over is the complacency of the applications service providers, SaaS, Web 2.0 companies, and venture captilists whose entire business model is dependent upon a neutral net.
It's funny how slashtards constantly say the government should go after the real "pirates" and yet when they do, as in the case you quoted
Many of the sites were real pirates, selling counterfeit goods. But at least one was simply a site with links. They were not pirating anything. And they were shut down anyway.
It was using a mechanism that's supposed to be above any one countries control, to block a site that government did not like - for whatever reason.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What are you talking about? Everyone (except California) LOVED Enron. Enron fell apart because they were corrupt and eventually their losses didn't match their earnings. They were raking in tons of dough. They just happened to be spending it too quickly.
There are very few industries where people can vote with their wallets. I live in an area with LOTS of internet options*. I can vote with my wallet between AT&T and Time Warner. Who happen to provide roughly equivalent non-service and old products. Their main competitor is Netflix, who SUPRISE, SUPRISE, they would like to run out of business by providing "tiered service". I'd say that Netflix's success shows that customers HAVE voted with their wallets FOR net neutrality.
Unfortunately, AT&T et. al have massive lobbying power and a massive anti-competitive political and legal framework on their side.
* as compared to areas that only have one
The idea that MS takes *years* between releases of Windows and Office is completely shredded with the speed that Windows 7 came out.
You mean except for the pesky little fact that the development of what became known as Windows 7 dates back to 2004 and predates the development of what was released as Windows Vista?
This is the problem with the internet. People are getting confused, and it's the politicians that are milking it.
On Slashdot, Engadget, Gizmodo, and every other tech site that you can think of: Net Neutrality is about preventing companies from creating a tiered system.
To the government, Net Neutrality is an excuse to take control of a system that seems to be out of control simply based on the happenings of the worst government-granted monopoly: cable (specifically Comcast). Truth be told, it is out of control. However, similar to everything else in life, you do not want the government to decide what's best for the rest of us (I say the "rest of us" because Congress has a nasty habit of exempting itself from large government bills: social security, including taxes, and the recent health care bill come to mind)!
To really fix the system, they need to fix cable. Stop endorsing the local monopolies that these companies live from, and start allowing (not immediately forcing) competition. As long as cartels are blocked from forming to avoid the next-best-thing from occurring where cable companies simply agree not to compete, then competition will force these companies to open up what they're doing. This would also positively affect TV deals so that your bill can stop going up every month for the exact same service (which is why I live off of Netflix and Hulu and only pay for FiOS internet).
Once this is stepped up, then the government can talk about its end of the enforcement bargain. Talk should focus only on preventing a tiered system. Fines and levies make sense in such a system, but not control by the government. We do not need another internet kill switch, or the ability for the government to inject party-of-the-year rules over the internet. This is what we will get if the current government gets to stuff Net Neutrality down our throats. And once the government gets a taste, then it is incredibly hard to pry it away.
Perhaps you shouldn't sit idly by while corporations take over the government,
If you limit the power the government has over your life, then it doesn't matter who "controls" the government. That's why it's so foolhardy to regulate the internet - you then place the internet in control of whoever happens to wield a lot of power, just by tweaking the regulations.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This guy is a jester. he works with similar clowns, so his argument is a lie at best. Get over it, the Net was built by governments (with the help of academia) and they have no intentions of letting it get away.
Yeah.
I suppose you're in full support of monopoly cable providers like Comcrap to block off all sites like this from their subscriber base.
And you're of course in full support of monopoly cable providers like Comcrap or TW deciding to try to extort companies like Google or Hulu to "pay for more access" merely because a large segment of their subscribers access Google or Hulu services.
Just think - every cable provider, every DNS provider, could be just as fucking locked off as people behind the "great firewall of china" are now, and you'd probably love it, huh?
... Net Neutrality is about preventing corporate control, not granting government control.
Given prior experience (e.g. mandatory purchase of medical insurance from corporations), how many here believe it'll end up as suggested in the above quote?
You are overloading the term "pirate" - selling knock-offs without identifying them as such is fraud, not "piracy" as the MAFIAA and most 'slashtards' use the term.
No, I am not and I used the scare quotes purposefully because the exact thing you mention at the end of your sentence. Maybe you should read up on what scare quotes means?
Well, technically you can at least adjust the government if you don't like it.
You can adjust politicians - individually.
What you cannot adjust if you don't like them, are government programs. They are eternal and immutable, once they get going.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't think he's a buffoon, but, you're right, it is a shame that people tune him out. Maybe those who tune him out should take this opportunity to rethink their position on the guy. So few politicians are willing to defend net neutrality it's really nice to see someone buck that trend.
meep
>>> zero evidence that any legitimate sites were shut down
Here on slashdot an article was posted that the Union government pulled websites that were *suspected* of sharing files. Many of them were, but some were merely hyperlinking to places like piratebay.org and isohunt.com, or blogs that were misidentified as sharing sites. So there's your evidence that legit sites were shutdown - just need to dig through the /. archives.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Cite your damned sources.
There might be some officials out there SAYING those things, but none of them would seriously consider trying to make it happen...it would be political suicide, and they know it.
Just because someone somewhere in the government says something doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen. Checks and balances are limited to different branches of the government, my friend; the public plays a role as well.
Living With a Nerd
Instead of hoping for better, more democracy-minded Senators (mind you, something people have been hoping for since the Roman empire with no real change), maybe it is time to start thinking about slowly working toward a system where we don't need Senators.
To quote an old TV show: "we have the technology." That makes all the difference.
Unwise men bearing Franken-nonsense.
Yeah, and that's why after removing wikileaks - amazon, visa and mastercard have now collapsed and have fallen into debt. Who are we kidding?
Voting with your wallet doesn't work unless you can get a LARGE mass of people to do so. And if we're talking about ISPs here, including some which are parts of even larger corporations...
You think that you're goign to get an entire neighbourhood to turn off Provider X and stay without internet and whatever because of this net neutrality thing? People don't care. They don't care about other video sides except X are being slowed down. In fact, it'll probably direct the market instead.
Corporations are well structured and controlled masses of power. The people are uncontrolled and have no direction. There's no chance.
Checks and balances aren't limited to different branches of the government
Fixed -_-;;
Living With a Nerd
Excuse me, but who do you think controls government? Over the last 30 years, there has been a steady erosion of checks and balances, middle class earning power and quality of life, and civil rights and freedom. At the heart of all of this has been the wholesale purchase of our government by commercial interests. At this point in the game, big business writes law, polices itself (or doesn't as the case may be), and has the vast majority of our representatives in it's pocket (in fact, forcing the need of multi-million dollar political campaigns for offices from Dog Catcher on up, ensures that only candidates who've been vetted by the money interests even get a chance to play in the political arena.) If government sucks, its because big business bought it, and now we're being governed by self obsessed, greedy capitalists who put personal profit ahead of justice, dignity, or the future of human advance.
If you're at all interested in government that isn't a brazen travesty, let's declare business a religion, and separate it from government so that the two might function apart as designed and immeasurably improve the human condition. While we're at it, we might also consider teaching ethics and social responsibility in our business schools... just a thought.
Did you read the article? Nobody said anything about freedom of speech. This is entirely about keeping companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from stifling competition.
Sounds horrible. I don't want to have to change my software every 5 years just because fashion has changed. It's bad enough I have to do that with clothing or cars.
"But the draft Order would effectively permit Internet providers to block lawful content, applications, and devices on mobile Internet connections. Mobile networks like AT&T and Verizon Wireless would be able to shut off your access to content or applications for any reason." - Franken
Well Mr. Franken..... you could just change providers. VirginMobile doesn't block anything. Neither does Sprint or Clear.
You only need to regulate monopolies where customers have no other choice, not free markets where there are many choices.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
If you want to "prevent corporate control," there are better ways like forcefully divesting the telecoms of their ISP businesses. Make Verizon sell off FiOS as a new company that has to license Verizon's infrastructure like any other business.
Honestly guys, have any of you ever ran a BitTorrent on your network at the same time as you are trying to watch streaming videos? You know, most of the time your video would be crappy. (Because it requires soft real-time delivery... and your routers are busy.) So what do you do? You go into your router and put some form of traffic control on it (be it QoS or connection limitation or whatever else). Now let me ask you a quesiton: If you are a paying cable modem user / DSL user, have it not pissed you off (sometimes) when you can not download anything or stream any videos / music because your neighbor kid next door decides to run non-stop BitTorrent movies downloading service? (Few years ago I got safficiently pissed and found that kid downloading 18 titles at the same time... He left them on for weeks!) And you know that the bandwidth in your neighborhood is crappy anyways? Why should the the ISP not be able to QoS the traffic between the kid and you and allow the same bandwidth, same number of concurrent connections to him as to me? I pay for my Internet too and want to watch my NetFlix and YouTube and even simply browse the Internet unmolested by the crappy page load-times.
True, So where is this Freedom of Speech infringement? Much like I would gladly pay for the inner 2 lanes of I-40 between Raleigh and Winston Salem NC to be the express lane,I also would pay extra to have my packets have priority. " Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. " oh like they do during the Superbowl? Why should the internet be any different than TV?
[sigh] I'm going to explain this as simply as possible.
There are people who want to censor the internet. Some of them are in government, some of them are in industry. There are also people who want to keep the internet free. Some of them are in government, some of them are in industry. Those of us who want the internet to remain a medium for free speech should oppose the actions of the first group, wherever they appear, and support the actions of the second group, wherever they appear. The choice is not "government control vs. industry control" but "censorhip vs. freedom," and net neutrality serves the "freedom" side.
If you oppose net neutrality, you are on the side of the censors. If you support net neutrality, you are on the side of freedom.
That's it. That's all there is.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Union government?
meep
You don't see any Republican politicians out there fighting for net neutrality, and when a Democrat does, the Republicans can't seem to come up with anything but personal insults and FUD to make their case. Corporate stooges, every last one of them.
For the same reason fewer people watch TV.
This was a story in a tabloid newspaper for idiots. A newly-elected Conservative MP proposed it but she is a nobody. The Register has a more accurate report.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Control is a constant. If you deny it here, you grant it here.
How can the government prevent the corporations who own these networks from having control, other than by seizing that control for itself?
Remember, the government is not a person. It's just an instrument for controlling the use of force by the collective. Net neutrality means that the collective mob has used the force of government as an instrument to gain control over other privately owned networks.
The corporations who own the networks *should* have control. It's private property. Every packet traversing their infrastructure is a guest.
Users should be able to pay for preferential treatment: bandwidth on demand, content delivery, etc.
No business should be forced to host someone who is detrimental to that business. If I run Acme ISP, and you use my network to put an anti-ACME-ISP website, it's my right to kick you off my property by shutting you down. This is not censorship. Censorship would be if the state prevented you from hosting that website anywhere (and that is exactly the sort of thing that will exist under net neutrality!)
Net neutrality is not the work of liberals, but conservatives, who ultimately want to censor content. It's only sold to the naive, greedy, socialist-leaning people as "equal access for all".
The People drove Circuit City into bankruptcy.
Also GM.
And Wards.
They can do the same with any other corporation they don't like. Look at Blockbuster which is teetering on the verge of death.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
the internet contains way more crap than TV ever did.
Cite YOUR sources, and your name while you're at it, Coward.
If the only way to prevent Corporate ownership is to give the Government more power, I'll take my chances with corporations, thank you.
The politicians are the ones spreading the FUD. That is their job, it's who they are, what they do.
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
Conservatives are superficially lumping network neutrality in with the rest of the anti-Obama/government/socialism rhetoric, but the issue is far too complex to capture in partisan soundbites. This Bill Moyers broadcast from a few years ago (well before Obama arrived on the scene) explains the network neutrality issue extremely well, representing multiple viewpoints, including business, politics, consumers etc. The broadcast is about an hour long, but I have yet to come across a better way to get the complete picture of what network neutrality is all about (each of these videos gives a useful illustration of a key tradeoff): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmlpfXzSfhg>Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 4 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9
as it is the corporations who have built the internet why should they not control it? people can vote with their wallet and other competitors, wired or otherwise, can emerge.
Double A-A-men to that, brother!
"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything."
One person, one vote. Not, one dollar, one vote. Understand the difference?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Explain how telling corporations to not discriminate data is the same thing as government having a direct say in what can and can't be transmitted at what speed.
Living With a Nerd
Its not like the FCC has a track record of censoring free speech, nor has it ever mandate that specific censor-based hardware be included with all content devices.
No, the FCC is totally for free speech and an unregulated internet, without question. We should trust them completely because they have NEVER done what the critics are afraid of.
"His name was James Damore."
Oh, yeah, Net neutrality is great. That is if you want Ford to be forced to also provide a pamphlet on GM cars whenever someone browses to the Ford web site. Otherwise, Ford is discriminating. Enforced "non-discrimination" is just dandy.
I agree... I want the net to be wide open, but I'd rather have it through competition; the government needs to stick to regulations making sure that healthy competition exists (anti-monopoly and price collusion, for example).
I don't like mandates like the ones proposed.
The companies that are affected could be more vocal to their customers, for example. Netflix should rightfully be telling it's customers that recent problems may have been due to Comcast interfering with the transmission instead of paying Comcast's extortion, and ought to promote providers that don't throttle ("We recommend ....")
It's true most people will stick with whatever they have because of attractive prices on bundled services or because of long term contracts, but that just makes things move more slowly, it doesn't prevent positive change from happening.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
So you believe that corporations should be allowed to use any old dirty tricks they want, and we should simply wait until enough people catch on and decide not to do business with them? That approach leads to fascism, my friend, and then you won't get to vote with your wallet, because there won't be any non-fascist options.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Enron collapsed as soon as we discovered they were doing wrong. That was the whole point. Nowadays, the wrongdoers get bailed out by taxpayer money, and keep on doing wrong without repercussion.
AT&T and Time Warner exist in their current form solely because of government regulation, consolidation, and franchise of past utility companies, under the guise of "natural monopoly". Government is still the reason there is no competition. If it wasn't for that, there would still be several competing utility companies in my town.
http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE9_2_3.pdf
>>>The idea that MS takes *years* between releases of Windows and Office is completely shredded with the speed that Windows 7 came out..... . Hence they rolled out Windows 7 and by most accounts it is pretty stable
Unimpressed.
Windows 7 is just Vista (NT6.0) with bugfixes.
So of course it came-out fast. Seven is Vista with a new number - NT 6.1.
Microsoft did exactly the same thing when Windows M.E. flopped: Just took Windows 2000/NT5.0, incremented it to 5.1, and renamed it XP. Microsoft isn't dumb. They take old product (Vista), make a few minor and quick changes, and then convince everyone it's a new product (Mohave/Seven). So that's why I'm unimpressed.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What I cannot get over is the complacency of the applications service providers, SaaS, Web 2.0 companies, and venture captilists whose entire business model is dependent upon a neutral net.
Perhaps they are hoping that they will be the next big thing themselves with enough cash to buy into the platinum level Comcast tier and leave their competition down in Basic.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Source? Do you have any proof of that claim? Nutjobs on the radio or a handful of government officials who, on their own, couldn't make a difference don't count.
Living With a Nerd
The problem is that by allowing corporations to grow into monopolies and mega-corporations who have diversified and subsumed entire markets, the only way to vote with your wallet is to move into a cave and start knocking out stone axes. Take any major industry... food for example. If you do a little research you find that it all boils down to half a dozen super corporations, that control everything from the seed that's planted to the packaging that arrives at your grocery store. What are you going to do? How are you going to vote? Do you honestly plan to stop eating at restaurants or buying the 95% percent of the food on the shelves that contains the wheat, soy, or corn products produced by those mega-corporations? You know the ones, that are receiving billions of dollars of your tax dollars in subsidies for the privilege of better controlling your life. Go a little further. Those same companies are also producing the ethanol that is mixed with the gas you drive your car with, or the soy oil that is used in everything from fried food to industrial solvents, or even the chemicals derived from wheat and corn that find their way into everything from textiles to plastic bottles to computers.
WAKE UP! If you spend a dollar anywhere, any more, you voted for them. Voting with your wallet is now a quaint and sadly naive concept. The time for sleep walking is over, if you want a vote you'd better get real clear where your votes are currently going.
The guy can make a good arguments without resorting to shouting or out right ignoring the public.
You have to consider that the people asked a question and let him respond without shouting or interrupting. On one hand this shows a dialogue with some actual interest in hearing what the other person has to say. On the other hand this is a key capability every politician needs: to be able to talk for a very lengthy amount of time and identify with anyone. What he did was good, he achieved some common ground with some very passionate opponents. But that's what politicians do. He's good but he's not accomplishing some impossible feat -- merely exhibiting good politeness and genuine interest in his constituents (opponents included). Franken had the attention of people that wanted to talk to him and what you saw were two parties genuinely interested in what the others had to say. Franken can lose his cool and act just like other politicians.
I wish my Senator would come around to the county fair and talk to his constituents like that.
Okay, I must correct you here. That was at the state fair which is a very huge thing in Minnesota and still a three to six hour drive from some of the more remote parts of Minnesota (like where I grew up). I don't think Al Franken makes it out to county fairs.
Now, I'm not disagreeing with you here and just to put some more positive spin on Franken, when I last went home my grandfather started rambling about all the times he had called up Franken and spoke with him on the phone. Thinking that my grandfather had finally lost it and was entering some sort of dementia, I asked my grandmother what he was talking about. She said he would wait on hold for thirty minutes and get about ten minutes of the senator's time every now and then (my grandfather is a retired dirt farmer living between Porter and Taunton). I was still skeptical but he showed me follow up letters from Franken's staff, hand signed by Franken explaining why Franken had voted on some bills that my grandfather had phoned him about. I was pretty impressed.
TFA makes some good points and breaks down "Net Neutrality" to the lay person who just wants to use the internet. You should try reading it.
On this point, I agree. I think Franken's on the right track here although I think he could have added another two sentence paragraph about limiting what specifically the FCC would be doing to address the obvious government control rebuttal a little more thoroughly. I am glad to see Franken writing this letter, though a little sad to see it in the Huffington Post and not a more mainstream publication.
It's odd but my favorite moments of Franken are often very different than most people's.
My work here is dung.
Will someone with a louder voice than mine please tell these people that all we need to guarantee net neutrality is true competition in wired-broadband?
If the FCC were to reinstate their line-sharing rules, the cable/telcos would have to lease their lines - at cost - to competitors.
Then, if Comcast decided to slow down Hulu because it's costing them TV subscribers, there'd be other ISPs to choose from!
iAi!
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Haha, you got modded -1 by these douches.
How dare you offer an opposing argument, they expect only facile attaboy's and mutual backslapping!
>>>So you believe that corporations should be allowed to use any old dirty tricks they wan
Strawman argument. NO I do not believe that. Please don't put words in my mouth, especially since I said in other posts that I Do think we need to regulate natural monopolies (electricity, phone, etc). But I also see that in most cases a government does not need to interfere when people have a free market. If I don't like Shitty Grocery Store I can go shop somewhere else, and if I don't like Kmart I can choose Target or Walmart or Macys instead. ----- Good companies succeed and lousy companies are driven into oblivion by the will of the People (via votes with their dollars).
.
>>>That approach leads to fascism
No it doesn't. Fascism is very clearly defined as "government-run corporations" which is not what I am endorsing at all (except in the case of natural monopolies).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Stop spreading FUD. Net Neutrality is about preventing corporate control, not granting government control.
And that's done HOW, exactly?
Oh, yeah - the GOVERNMENT creates rules.
How is that not "government control"? (By the same government that gives us the TSA, no less....)
Whether you agree with the intent of the rules or not, saying that's "not granting governmen control" is disengenuous. At best.
Control is a constant. If you deny it here, you grant it here.
If that were true, then the considerable progress toward human freedom which has characterized the last half-millennium or so would have been impossible. People in general, and particularly in the industrialized world, suffer less control now than our ancestors did at any point in human history. Unfortunately, the forces of control have never quite forgotten their ancient privileges, and they're constantly fighting to put things back the way they were. Defeatist attitudes like yours aid them in this goal.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"the Federal Communications Commission has the power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality."
No. They don't. But, they sure would like to, and will certainly pretend to.
That a sad thing with government, you can't trust it with the power to redefine its own power, as it will invariably be abused.
Of course, when *all* ISPs do this (and it will happen) how exactly do you vote with your wallet?
Proof that Democrats are no better than Republicans. Same old corporate whores. Wait, what?
Don't bother arguing with these morons. Most of them are too young to remember how we had to fight to keep the government from censoring and otherwise hampering the Internet back in the 90's as it started to blossom.
All you'll get is the usual brigade of clueless idiots who think anyone who doubts the governments ability to regulate the internet, provide healthcare for all, undo the injustice of rich vs. poor, etc... is some kind of right wing kook.
Except that this isn't about controlling the internet. Nothing in net neutrality changes what content is available on the internet
You know this how? Very few people have seen the proposed regulation yet. You are only stating what you WISH the regulation to be, like everyone else. Everyone is gung-ho for "Net Neutrality" because for every person they imagine the regulation to cure every ill they imagine with no bad side effects.
Furthermore the regulation would be under the jurisdiction of an agency that in fact does exist (at least in part) to control content. Is it so hard to imagine a regulation later being tweaked to add content provisions "for the children"?? Can you really not see that happening?
Once a regulation is in place it never stays as it is. Government organizations (really any organization) exists to expand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Like all laws in the US, network neutrality will be interpreted and enforced differently, depending on who is in charge.
So instead of all the drama about what laws are actually in effect today, let's work with the internet we have and not screw with it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Funny, I was about to ask the authors of the proposal the same thing...
Because, you know, they are proposing the second and calling it the first.
Lol, you haven't really thought through your argument then. If you didn't mean copyright pirates then you are basically arguing about nothing.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Enron cooked their books and they were a house of cards stealing money anywhere they could get it for years. Honestly they are the perfect example of an out of control company.
The people that discovered they were "doing wrong" were from the SEC. You're example is completely backwards. Oh, wow. You're linking to mises, why do I bother replying to this.
When you are in bed with a whore/gigalo, you can justify that you are, at least, getting some sex, even if it costs a little more and it may kill you in the future.
ASPs need ISPs. ISPs need ASPs, and both need us, but in this little three way, we only pay to watch while they enjoy each other.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Perhaps many people could do so in the form of choosing a different one of the total one broadband provider in their area.
So why don't we fix that instead of imposing "one-size-fits-all" solutions down from Washington DC?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Their main competitor is Netflix, who SUPRISE, SUPRISE, they would like to run out of business by providing "tiered service". I'd say that Netflix's success shows that customers HAVE voted with their wallets FOR net neutrality.
Net neutrality doesn't have anything to do with tiered service. Tiered service is completely compatible with net neutrality as long as it doesn't discriminate between different sources of traffic.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I have mixed emotions about Network Neutrality. The concept has some good points, but there are large down sides as well. The worst thing is AFAIK no one has ever found a case that would be affected by most of the proposals I've seen posted. The closest I have seen was a telco blocking Vonage's SIP registration ports several years back, which the FCC caught. Neither AT&T nor Verizon are major rural players and mobile is most certainly not the way people in rural areas get their broadband. Perhaps the Senator should go a little further off the highway to see how people are connecting. FIXED wireless (Alvarion, Tranzeo, Canopy, etc), DSL, DOCSIS cable, and a surprising amount of FTTx but damn little mobile broadband.
What if you are too poor to own a car, the bus system in your city sucks, and you have no choice but to patronize ShittyGrocery? This happens all to often in the real world, which is why upscale grocery stores tend to have better deals, and why ghetto grocery stores are more likely to overcharge at the register.
Money allows you to accumulate power. Power allows you to accumulate money. More and more wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The barriers to starting any business are simply too large for most people to overcome. No one in the Shitty Neighborhood has the capital to start a competing grocery store. The margins on a fairly run grocery store are vanishingly small. Why would a rich person want to invest in a fairly run grocery store in Shitty neighborhood, when they have much better investment opportunities available?
Telecommunications are a natural monopoly. either they use the public airwaves, or they use wires, and if they use wires, the cost of entry into the market precludes any second party from competing against the first entrant. And those wires run over public lands.
Lousy companies are more profitable than good companies, at least at first, until people find out. With modern public relations management, a company can be quite shitty but still look good to the public. Companies hide and distort the truth all the time. PR firms practicing image management can make even murderous firms look good.
What's more, an evil corporation can take the profits from doing evil and use those profits outside the market, putting extra-market pressures on their competitors, suppliers, customers, and workers. Worker complains? Fire him. Customer complains? Sue them for libel. Suppliers want more money? Buy out their other customers, or cut deals with the other customers, to put the complainer out of business. Competitors doing too well? Buy out their suppliers, or just undercut them until they fold and then double your prices to recoup the losses.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So you think in a true marketplace we'd still have multiple carriers? I somehow doubt it. As inelegant as our situation is, I think government is still the answer. Government just requires thought, work, and inelegant solutions.
In Houston they have a choice of energy provider. In Austin we have none. The Austin governmental utility company always outperforms every one of the Houstonian companies in opinion surveys. Profits from Austin Energy are plowed back into the city coffers. Government doesn't have to suck.
Just remember in the US we all are the government. So when you say that government is the problem. You're really saying YOU are the problem.
Just took Windows 2000/NT5.0, incremented it to 5.1, and renamed it XP
Your point is valid but there was a bit more change from 2000 to XP than a version number.
Dialup provides more (13 GB) than Verizon's Wireless (5GB)
I love your new signature, btw.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Do you REALLY think whatever the government does, it's not going to be screwed up or subverted somehow?
REALLY?
What's your evidence that the US government won't fuck it up and make it worse?
Please google Comcast and Neflix. I know the difference between "tiered service" and a protection racket.
If YouTube, Netflix, and every other video site are treated the same. That's tiered service. If I go and knock on the door of only the most popular (and richest) video service in town and demand payment, that's not tiered service.
Are you daft? that was the small window I suggested was the evidence of them not moving as fast as they can. A six year gap on the consumer OS that is magically reduced to 2 years?
NT 3.1 1993
NT 3.5 1994
NT 3.51 1995
NT 4.0 1996
Win98 2000
WinME 2000 Win2000 2000
Win XP 2001
W2K3 2003
Vista 2007
W2K8 2009
Windows7 2009.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Let's break this down into the absolute simplest terms:
Say your Mom says you can go play outside with your friend Jimmy. She says you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and for as long as you want. The only rule is that you can't be mean to anyone.
Would you consider your Mom to be controlling you?
Living With a Nerd
They can do the same with any other corporation they don't like.
There is no indication that the companies you listed weren't "liked", but merely that they did not provide quality goods and services at a reasonable price.
In other words, find examples of very successful companies that went on to fail not because of their direct relationship to consumers, but because of their political affiliations and "out-of-store" business practices.
On the other hand, there are many examples of businesses that are succeeding despite quite a large outcry at their practices, with WalMart being the #1 example. Or, look at how Exxon didn't collapse after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, despite huge negative publicity. Or, how about the MPAA member companies seeing record profits despite treating their customers like convicted criminals?
Break up companies such that there are "pipe providers" and "content providers". If my net service provider is not also my cable TV company then it loses much of its motivation to oppose net neutrality. Of course, this may not go far enough. If I'm an ISP and my backbone connection doesn't provide sufficient bandwidth to Comcast's digital cable stream, Comcast will be unhappy (and so will my users). So I'll need to add that bandwidth. The question is how much of that effort should be paid for by me, the "pipe guy" and Comcast (or any other content provider). I'm tempted to say that the market would dictate "pipe provider" behavior without any direct intervention from content providers. For instance, if Comcast offers digital cable and says "our service works on X, Y and Z providers, but not U, V and W", then U/V/W are going to face pressure to properly support Comcast's content stream.
Nobody says you *have* to change anything, just that the market would force more innovation.
There is still a pretty solid 'monopoly' when all the carriers in your area have the same set of rules...like not allowing tethering without an extra charge. This is slowly changing..but proves the point; 2 or 3 is not 'many choices'.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Comcast and Netflix is a peering dispute, the likes of which we've seen before. Can't say that I'm all that bothered about it.
Tiered service == bandwidth caps, at least in my mind. That's what I thought you were talking about.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You said when they want to they can move fast so it doesn't take years (your choice of words) to produce a new OS.
I pointed out that your fast was still almost 3 years.
Which you're now trying to counterpoint by posting dates showing that "less years" is pretty much standard, except for the one exception (Vista) that you're somehow trying to claim is the rule and not the exception?
And you're asking if I'm daft?
Malware, I would be careful.
A modicum of due diligence would help you, poor misguided coward. The SEC didn't bother to start investigating Enron until after their shares had already plummeted by 83% in one year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/01/business/sec-opens-investigation-into-enron.html
What was the government doing the whole time Enron was stealing all this money? Hmmm?
Stop spreading FUD. Net Neutrality is about preventing corporate control, not granting government control.
Problem is, to prevent corporate control, you must grant the government control over the corporation. And why would we want to prevent corporate control anyway? I get paid by a corporation. I don't want them to be controlled by the government.
And what's worse, we're talking about government control over information. How long until some government executive decides that the real reason for so much negative press is that the ISPs simply MUST be throttling his supporters, and invokes "net neutrality" as justification for political censorship?
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
There might be some officials out there SAYING those things, but none of them would seriously consider trying to make it happen...it would be political suicide, and they know it.
As long as it's "all for the good of the children" and their opponents can be asked about "why do you want to support terrorists?", all these things will come to pass quite easily.
Note my above post where I point out that 19 Senators voted to censor the Internet and there hasn't been much of a news impact about that at all. If you know anything about our Congress, you know that committees are where the real legislation takes place. So, if those committee members had voted the other way, the bill never gets a chance to be voted on by the full Senate. Meanwhile, the fact that they voted unanimously will sway many other Senators in the final vote, because they wrongly assume the committee members have taken more time studying the bill because it is their area of expertise.
No malware at all. That was a rumor started by someone who didn't approve of the content.
For all the good and bad the net has generated and those lingering debates notwithstanding, we don't need to address problems with the net via "Franken Sense". He is an anti-capital nightmare (unless we're talking about his own personal financial benefits). The net allows for capital expansion and new opportunity (even for the like-minded "Franken Steins" out there). Net neutrality is a formula for lost opportunities (individual and corporate), lost earnings and fewer people employed. He can dress it up any way he wants, but that underbelly is dark and scary.
Thom
Because they're paying for their Internet connection. It's not up to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, or anyone else to tell me whether or not I should be able to go to Amazon's website or the local bookstore down the street's website. Amazon is paying for a bigger pipe, bigger servers, etc. Their website is already going to be faster/more responsive, sure. And IIRC I've seen local commercials in the OTA broadcasts of the Superbowl (probably because the Network has a deal set up with their affiliates across the country). Allowing Amazon to pay ISPs to "prioritize" their packets (or really to de-prioritize their competition) would be kinda like saying Wal-mart paying affiliates to not air competitor's ads (or I guess really delaying the broadcast of those ads to later time). -- Worst analogy ever.
ISPs are basically trying to get a bite of the apple from you and the site you're visiting. You've both paid for your connection, there are peering agreements so it doesn't cost them any extra for you to visit Amazon or the local bookstore's site, yet they want the local bookstore to pay extra to every ISP to keep their packets flowing to anyone equally. And as much as I'm sure you would pay extra to have your packets get priority, good luck winning a money battle with Amazon on who gets higher priority with your customer's ISP.
I got nuthin
Based on... ? Your religious libertarian beliefs?
I'm sure your own zeolotry prevents you from seeing the obvious. If something is regulated, it is controlled. It is by definition then controlled through lobbying for changes to said regulation, or from internal ideas that change the regulation.
Because the point of regulation is control it is madness to claim that regulation does not control, which is the essence of any counterargument. Because there are not many companies that can afford to lobby, there are therefore only a small number of companies that offer input into the evolution of regulation.
Please do explain to us just what part of this summary is incorrect, even though this is exactly what has happened with every other government regulation since the big bang.
If you do not regulate something then control will flow between companies naturally over time. But you will not have a focal point of control that never changes and through which changes must be processed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Except it isn't, since Wal-mart artificially deflates the cost of goods it sells by externalizing costs, it removes itself from anything resembling a 'free' market. A free market *requires* all costs be internalized. This is never going to happen.
It comes down to this: Google pays their ISP for the bits they send. I pay my ISP for the bits I request. If I happen to request them from Google, my ISP now says Google should have to pay them to deliver it, despite the fact that I *already* paid them to receive them, no matter where they came from.
As we look on things right now, Comcast already has a phone offering, a TV offering, and a net offering. They have their own streaming movie service that no one uses because it sucks. Without net neutrality, they can choose to block Netflix packets completely, or slow them to the point where they might as well be blocked, while their movie service just hums along. How long does it take until this circumvents the "free market" and the will of the people, by making Comcast's movie service more popular than Netflix, not because of content, or value, but simply artificially enhanced usability? How long til Netflix dies, because every single ISP in the country slows them down in favor of their own service, which gets priority traffic? How does that constitute a "free market" at all? Especially when Comcast can offer their service at a loss, undercutting what Netflix can offer? How is that the best company coming out ahead?
This becomes even more worrisome now that Comcast is buying NBC. We now have content provider and content delivery in one. How long until they start charging based on the origin of the content, not just its delivery? Will NBC produced shows, movies, and content be delivered cheaper and faster, while everyone else's are slowed down, unless they pay up?
The argument is usually made that people can just "switch providers, if they don't like what they do", but for a vast majority of Americans, that either isn't possible, or isn't viable. I have exactly two choices where I am, Comcast or Verizon. The Verizon service is... flaky, which is being generous. It shouldn't even qualify as "broadband". So my choice is Comcast. Oh, and thanks to clever lobbying on the part of Comcast, cable franchises in my state are set at the state level, meaning I can no longer even petition my local government for a change, nor vote for anything different.
I also like the argument put forward by some that we could just "do without broadband". Yes, I am sure we could, if we wanted to give up our chance for a real future. As more government functions and services are placed online, more people go to school online, or do their jobs online, a good high speed connection is not just desirable but required.
The government is not my parent. Such analogies concern me and you should seriously examine your understanding of government and its purpose.
It's easier to control companies. Just don't purchase their services.
Good lord. RTFM before you start spreading delusions of consumer power. Perfect Competition is more of a theory than an existing market structure -- which, btw, don't exist without significant regulation (e.g. stock or commodities markets).
Look, I love the idea, but.
No one has yet given me a technical definition of network neutrality that allows me to block or filter spam.
The right to say "I don't want your content" or "I only want a trickle of your content" is a pretty important right. In fact, it's also a free speech issue -- one of the rights of free speech is freedom from compelled speech.
I want the right to refuse unwanted traffic, or traffic-shape it into oblivion. But that seems to be essentially incompatible with "net neutrality". Once I'm making judgements on whether I feel happy with the amount of traffic I get from a given source, I'm not being net neutral. But if I can't make those judgements, people drown in spam.
So go ahead. Offer a set of words that we could back as "net neutrality" which couldn't be used as the basis for lawsuit-based harassment of ISPs that block spam. Remember, you're proposing laws; you can't rely on any kind of common sense or sanity. If your words do not mean EXACTLY what you want, and have all the exceptions clearly encoded, you have probably made things worse rather than better.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
You're right, I'm on the side of the censors. I've been blocking spam aggressively on networks I run for over ten years, and I'm not planning to stop.
That's censoring. I am making the unilateral decision that people who send bulk quantities of email to harveste addresses are not valuable enough to get access to my network.
Cry me a river.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
It sure seems to me that they can interfere all they want now, and make any sort of craptacular censorship regulations they want. All without net neutrality being an issue. So how then does preventing corporations from controlling things mean the government automatically does, or doesn't? By conflating these two entirely separate issues, you create a false sense of equality and causality, where none exist. We have already seen that the government can pass laws to censor what you can find on the net, and they did it under current conditions. Having 'net neutrality' and packet equivalence for any traffic has no bearing on that issue at all.
The People drove Circuit City into bankruptcy.
Also GM.
And Wards.
Yeah, the *people* that were management at those companies.
There is a war going on for your mind.
...check.
Honestly I am getting tired of rural subsidies and rural issues being made so important in elections.
People living in rural areas have to start to realize there is a trade-off. Either you live in a rural area and sacrifice some modern-day niceties for the benefit of living outside the city, or you move to the city.
People who live in cities should not be forced to subsidize people who choose to live outside the city. City living is more environmentally efficient and more economically efficient. Therefore federal and state governments should be encouraging city migration as much as possible. This is not accomplished by pandering to the rural electorate - people living in cities *SHOULD* be favored because their tax dollar efficiency is so much higher.
So you believe that corporations should be allowed to use any old dirty tricks they want, and we should simply wait until enough people catch on and decide not to do business with them? That approach leads to fascism, my friend, and then you won't get to vote with your wallet, because there won't be any non-fascist options.
Perhaps, but what is more fascist than telling a business owner that they have no power over their own property? Seriously, if CableCompany runs all that copper to those homes at their own cost, signs up customers of their own free will, provides them with the service as advertised, who is the government to intervene?
I understand the concept. And I like it. I just feel there exists no power under the United States government to apply it. Maybe, maybe on the backbone(s) where there are commons-claims to be made, but even at the last mile?
Put it this way, should we grant this power - to force telcos to do business only as we see fit - what did they gain in return? What do the people gain? What, also do we lose?
I guess I'm rather neutral about Net Neutrality...
Uhm, can you please tell me how this is anywhere near a meaningful analogy? Net neutrality wouldn't require Ford to give out pamphlets on GM cars, it would prevent Ford from buying the roads and then charging me again, in addition to the taxes already collected from me for the roads, for driving a GM car.
Uhm... except that they weren't. The "internet" as we know it was funded first by DARPA, then the NSF, both taxpayer funded organizations. Those companies were PAID to build the internet, with our money. They continue to get grants and funding to increase speeds, lower costs, and provide wider and better services, but then complain that they just can't possibly get by making only a billion dollars a year in profit, they need some help... AGAIN.
Fascism is very clearly defined as "government-run corporations"
I think you might need to reread your dictionary. You might have that a little backwards. Or maybe you are watching Fox News.
Support SETI@home
I couldn't help but notice you didn't answer the question.
Living With a Nerd
My apologies, I assumed /.ers would be relatively familiar with this idea. Sources should have been provided and I'll also retract 'studies' for articles. Also note that knock-off is different than counterfeit; I'm not saying the latter is helpful, just the former.
http://www.techdirt.com/ for general stuff on this topic.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0909/p09s01-coop.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/business/05scene.html?ex=1333425600&en=bfb7593c76d8b819&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faking-it This one is interesting as it provides a guilty conscience aspect that eventually would have people buying the brand names to feel better about themselves.
I think the basic point is that people who knowingly buy knock-offs were never going to be initial purchasers of the brand name goods. But they would buy them once the price became palatable to them. No sale was 'lost' by
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Access to information is what elevates us above cavemen. The net may be full of filth but it's also full of real information, even vital information—on geography, health, science, and even entertainment. The more time I spend in rural areas, the more I am awed by the sad paucity of information available to people who actually would like to learn about the world outside their town. Increasing numbers of critical documents are available online. Broadband affects quality of life and encourages growth of business.
Now, if you'd said "someone might not get his WoW fix, oh noes" I probably would have agreed with you.
The Internet is full. Go away.
Without broadband, my full-time job of the last decade, which these days involves uploading and downloading multiple gigabytes of data per day, would be impossible. I'm fortunate in that I have a choice of two broadband providers locally, but for many people that's not the case. (And even there, a choice of two huge corporations with nearly identically bad policies isn't really a choice.)
You do realize that all cable companies run "their" wires over public lands, right? If they don't want us to have a say, they need to buy up all the land they run their cables over. Otherwise, when they negotiate the use of our public lands, we can demand of them anything we like. We already have the power to force the telcos to do as we see fit. We also have the moral authority to do so, as they negotiated with us for the use of public right-of-ways and public airwaves. Again, if they don't like it, let them buy the property they run their cables over.
This is all just basic contract and property rights. I know you have libertarian leanings, and let me tell you, this is one reason I distrust libertarians. Libertarians seem to be all for property rights and contract law, except when the property in question is held by a group of people they don't like, i.e. "The government." That is to say, a group of people forming a corporation get full protection, but a group of people forming a government do not appear to have any property rights at all under the actual working libertarian philosophy. But a government is nothing more than a group of individuals. I don't understand how libertarian logic works, where one group of people should have absolute property rights, but another group should not.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
But darjen is the problem. As are you, tthomas48
I've seen the list.
perhaps you should talk to the other poster to claims that Win7 has been in development since 2004..
;-)
Can't be both 'just bug fixes' and a 5 year dev cycle. Though Vista did have a lot of problems...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I have repetitively pointed out that peering is an important feature of the Internet. Networks peer with each other when there is mutual benefit to both parties. For example, at one point it was noted that Yahoo! only payed for half of their bandwidth (transit). Half of their content was delivered to eyeballs via peering. If an ISP's transit link get congested, then the large companies (or Colo's) that are directly peered with the ISP will get their traffic delivered faster. How does regulation help this situation? I thought Net Neutrality was about treating all traffic the same. In the case of Comcast, people complain that they aren't buying enough transit bandwidth. Comcast notices that a lot of their customers are puling a lot of traffic from Netflix. Comcast goes to Netflix and tries to make a peering agreement (a la Yahoo!-style). People complain that this is unfair to other video services because it is not neutral. Excuse me? By this definition most peering is not neutral. So where does it end? Are we talking only limited filtering and QoS? Are we talking about killing peering? Are we talking about forcing companies to buy bandwidth?
That may be what you mean by Net Neutrality, but is that what the various government agents mean by Net Neutrality? Have you looked at some of the stuff that is coming out about what the FCC means by Net Neutrality?
Just because someone uses a term you understand for something doesn't mean that they are talking about the same thing you would be if you used that term.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Comcrap only has a monopoly in places where the government made it so. Less government control would seem to be the solution, then.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well how about that lutefisk? Got any good wild rice hotdish recipes?
... but wait! Our very own Minneota Vikings are playing right now! Hey, I heard Johnny Holm (not the porn star) is playing over in Ghent, MN. Maybe you've heard of it, it's the Rolle Bolle capital of the world! After that we'll get some drinks at the Silver Dollar. Maybe get some Schwann's ice cream and support the locals?
...
Taunton, MN is a cultural epicenter to most of the Western world experiencing several staggering redefinitions of art and industry bringing exactly 75% of their population above the poverty line! Just a quick jaunt down 68 will bring you to the farmer's co-op elevator where I spent my youth hauling pickles for my parents and grandparents. After that, stop by CJ's for some great burgers on vintage folding tables. Did somebody say 'buck euchre'?! Too bad we missed Boxelder Bug Days
Seriously though, I was born in Canby and spent the first 18 years of my life picking rock and bailing hay just East of Camden state park. For a while I worked at Rye's Tree Nursury but that's about as far Northwest as my labor employment got. Good times. Fer sure, donchya know?
I would kill for a Brau Bros or Grain Belt or Surlys right now
My work here is dung.
How do you "prevent corporations from controlling things" without giving the government the power to do so instead?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The economics aren't that simple nor is the environmental impact. Many people tend to mix suburbs with rural and they're not the same thing. Until we get to the point where its cost effective to raise all of the food needed by city inhabitants within city limits we're going to need rural areas. Its certainly possible to raise that much food but I don't believe you could do it without dramatically changing the American diet. I don't see Americans saying good bye to hamburgers (made from beef) any time soon. If don't think we should subsidize rural broadband then you might think we should stop subsidizing electricity (which is were all of these subsidizes originated in the US). In that case everyone in the US whether that person lives in a rural, suburban, or urban area, will pay a lot more for for food.
The ONLY way to stop corporate control of something by a small group of companies with lobbying power is not to regulate it. End of story.
Either that, or write regulations that are a matter of condition rather than favor.
It's really not that hard to stipulate something to the effect that carriers aren't allowed to bill by source or destination of a packet.
Tweet, tweet.
"Allowing corporations to control the internet is simply unacceptable" - yeah, about that.... the govt track record is so much better. The US Govt would love nothing more than absolute control
Yes. Network neutrality is a government take-over of the internet in the same way the first amendment is a government takeover of religion.
I disagree. Your point would be better made by requiring the government purchase all the wire they wish to have powers over. Let there be no privately-owned comms and the problem goes away.
That is to say, a group of people forming a corporation get full protection, but a group of people forming a government do not appear to have any property rights at all under the actual working libertarian philosophy.
This is largely accurate. The chief reason being, you or I or anyone can trivially form a corporation. Try that with a government. These are not equitable entities. Further, when was the last time a corporation imprisoned anyone?
So while governments, corporations and chess clubs are all comprised of gathered individuals, the context of their powers is different.
You'd ascribe governmental powers to everyone's property, while I'm suggesting we limit the corporation's power only over their own.
Back to the original point, though, didn't we require by law that the copper be available for use by competing corporations at a low fixed cost? I remember reading about community-owned internet ventures trying it out. In the end I think they decided that without the profit motive that it wasn't compelling enough to pursue.
Same here.
but on this issue, it appears that this *Comedian* certainly has a better grasp on this issue than the *Experts* at the FCC.
Nope, his grasp is just as bad as the FCC's. He says the FCC already has the "power to issue regulations that protect net neutrality" but he does not name those powers. As a matter of fact court rulings have said the FCC does not have those powers. In order to get around those court rulings the FCC is unilaterally making changes to it's regulations.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Voting with your wallet doesn't work unless you can get a LARGE mass of people to do so.
I'm pretty sure that voting is always about getting a large mass of people to agree with your opinion and act accordingly. But voting with your wallet is kind of like asking people to answer an open ended question with True or False.
What was it you were voting for? Better customer service or Net Neutrality? Something else entirely?
Also, plenty of people don't vote in elections. Since they don't care enough to make their opinions known through action they are discounted from the process. Unfortunately, when voting with your wallet there will be plenty of people who don't want to "vote" but there's no way to distinguish them from votes for the incumbent.
Fortunately we do vote for our representatives, so maybe instead of trying to divine a purpose from indirect actions we should just tell our representatives what we want and empower them to make decisions in our best interest.
Maybe the fact that we had government enforced net neutrality before and no one was complaining about government control. People claim that government regulation makes everything worse, but we have the glaring example of the government regulations helping the initial growth of the internet with net neutrality (the net was neutral in the 1990s).
>>>What if you are too poor to own a car
I have one you could buy for $200 (blue book value) and a second one that's about $1000 in value.
.
>>>you have no choice but to patronize ShittyGrocery?
I don't see how you think government is supposed to fix this problem? Yes there probably are 0.01% of Americans not within walking distance of a second grocery store. Oh well.
.
>>>If they use wires, the cost of entry into the market precludes any second party from competing against the first entrant
Not with the wonderful invention called fiber optics. You could easily run a bundle of 50 fibers in the same space that a single Coax cable used to take-up, and then have the government lease those lines to 50 different companies, giving home-owners a true choice. So it really isn't a natural monopoly - or at least doesn't have to be.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Actually, for the most part, conservatives don't trust the government not to impose control over Internet content under the guise of "net neutrality". In the beginning the regulations will be very subtle, but they will establish the precedent for government regulation of the Internet. Then bit by bit the government will extend its regulation so that it will be harder and harder to get information from anyone other than the approved mega-corporations.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I believe he his referring to the Fairness Doctrine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
What is your point? That the government took too long to punish them? I'd agree with that for sure, but using them as an example of a company that's "controllable" is idiotic. _Both_ Wall Street and the corrupt "pro business" Bush admin missed the signs for years. Are you conveniently forgetting that Enron's illegal activities were aided by Wall Street accounting firms? They had been cooking the books from 1997 until 2001. If you're focusing on the timing of Wall street vs SEC, you're missing the point.
Also, try to put what you're saying in context. Just after 9/11 just about all stock fell huge amounts. I'm not sure how much 83% is due to wall street complaining about illegal activities. It wouldn't surprise me if 20% of that or so was general market loss. There is also some blame of the share price being related to broaband trades that didnt pan out well for them.
When it disclosed the commission's informal inquiry on Oct. 22, Enron promised to cooperate fully with the S.E.C.
So yeah, looks like your link shows they were already investigating Enron. That article is about the formal declaration. Most eyebrows were raised when the restated earnings from a quarterly statement prior to that. Their house of cards caught up with them. It was wrong to imply the SEC saved the day, but it's way more idiotic to think the free market solved the Enron problem. If they hadn't been required (by government regulations no less) to state earnings they would have happily continued to build their house of cards. I suppose you didn't catch that their share price went up the day the SEC investigation was announced.
The next time you preach due diligence, maybe you should do your own first.
Sure, that's how the country actually runs things, unfortunately the Verizon/AT&T/Sprint/T-mobile gang have a lot bigger wallets than you.
You do realize that most local governments chose a middle path, letting the cable companies have monopoly rights to run the wires in exchange for concessions from the cable companies? Why do you not support the right of individuals to freely enter into contracts?
You and I and anyone can not trivially form a corporation with any power, or marketplace penetration. The elite have raised the barrier to entry. There is no real free market, there is only their market, and if you want to play, you do so by their rules and at their whims.
I suggest that the corporations have already entered contracts with local governments, in order to gain monopoly rights to run their wires, and those contracts offer us some control over their wires. If the cable companies didn't want that, they didn't have to enter into contracts.
I'm not saying the government should have absolute power over everyone's property. I'm saying, the government should have power over public property like roads and sidewalks.
We did require that wire owners who entered into monopoly deals to lay said wire on public property share those wires at the same rate they charged their own internal divisions that used those wires. So, if the companies internal ISP is charged for use of the wires at a certain rate, then anyone should be able to buy bandwidth in bulk at that rate. That was part of the deal the telecos and cable companies agreed to, but they didn't like it, and so they paid to have the law changed to negate their contractual agreements.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You do know that the FCC is a US regulating agency, right? The UK Government has no jurisdiction over them. I have not heard the FCC propose to block all porn. Citation would be nice. Also, as far as the fairness doctrine is concerned, the purpose of that was to make sure people were supplied with a diversity of viewpoints. I seem to recall that the limited number of channels people had access to was an important consideration. If you have neutral access to the internet, I don't see how it could be argued that it would be needed. I do believe that there was talk about re-implementing it on TV (which is off-topic for this discussion). Again, citation would be helpful.
How are corporate monopolies any better than government (monopolies)? At least with government the electorate has some influence. With corporate monopolies, the only influence the common man has is through government.
Please read about natural monopoly. If you think it is economically feasible for fifty companies to each run wires to every home, you simply do not understand what a natural monopoly is. Thyat is massively inefficient. Only one of those fifty wires will be in use. The rest will be wasted. The companies that put in those wires will go bankrupt. In natural monopoly situations, the free market fails to efficiently distribute resources.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So you've never heard of "voting with your wallet"?
Perhaps many people could do so in the form of choosing a different one of the total one broadband provider in their area.
There's always going-out-getting-a-business-loan-or-venture-capital-and-starting-your-own-ISP-if-you-hate-the-options-you-have, part of it. And don't say it can't be done, that's a quitters way out.
whose entire business model is dependent upon a neutral net.
Actually, their entire business model depends upon their customers' pipes not being completely crushed with torrent traffic generated by their customers' twelve year old neighbors ripping off movies or hosting DDoS attacks against The Man in the name of whatever cause they're backing this week because they heard that sophisticated junior high school girls dig activists.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
No one has yet given me a technical definition of network neutrality that allows me to block or filter spam.
Spam is already illegal. Enacting rules or legislation that explicitly allows for filtering of traffic deemed illegal based on pre-existing law would be trivial enough.
If your words do not mean EXACTLY what you want, and have all the exceptions clearly encoded, you have probably made things worse rather than better.
While I believe your example is poor, in this, you are absolutely correct.
The problem is, there really are legitimate uses of QoS, and defining regulation that enforces net neutrality while *also* allowing for legitimate use of QoS is extremely challenging. For example, a rule stating "source/destination-based QoS is illegal" is too simplistic, as it still allows protocol-level discrimination (Skype is the obvious example here). If you then say "well, then make protocol-level QoS illegal" means you've made *all* QoS illegal, and that's bad, too (deprioritizing bulk transfers behind real-time traffic is the primary need QoS fills).
Fundamentally, I'll bet net neutrality regulation would have to go the way of obscenity laws... ie, the "I know it when I see it" approach. Which, obviously, has massive problems of its own.
You can technically live without electricity but that doesn't mean the power company should be allowed to bill you more per kWh just because you bought a Kenmore fridge instead of a GE even if they both use the same amount of power...
We have advanced to the point where not having internet access or even not having reasonably fast internet access can place people at a significant disadvantage, especially when it comes to communication and political discourse which are both essential to the democratic process. The internet is rapidly approaching the point where it logically should be classified as a utility.
Where is your evidence? Your statement sounds like opinion. When has Franken disregarded the constitution? And for that matter, where in the Constitution does it prohibit socialism?
I'm not trying to be mean here, but you come across as angry and uninformed in your posts. If you provided even one example of Franken acting against the Constitution, you wouldn't sound so juvenile. As it is, it sounds like you are trying to preach to the choir, to convince only those who are already convinced, and what good is that?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Your false choice is not so simple. We all [consumers] want a neutral internet. The problem comes when trying to get there, as either corporations or government will eventually try to grab power to regulate it by some means. Once the governement does regulate and bring about 'net neutrality' there is little in the way to stop them from regulating further. Government only grows in size and power. Rarely, if ever, does it shrink or give up its power. While a Net Neutrality bill may look good on paper for today, what impact will that have for users 10, 50, 100 years from now?
Straw man arguments are lies.
Ah, but the government pours those roads and sidewalks... That's salient.
Windows 7 is just Vista (NT6.0) with bugfixes.
How can that be when the development of the branch that became Win7 predates the development of Vista? In fact, what became Vista was basically a branching off of the Blackcomb branch after the first scrapping of Longhorn.
So of course it came-out fast. Seven is Vista with a new number - NT 6.1.
Ahh, this lame argument again. Do you also call XP Win2k with a new number? You do realize that Win2k was NT 5.0 and XP was 5.1, right?
They came first for the illegal file sharers,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't sharing files illegally.
Then they came for the high bandwidth users,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a high bandwidth user.
Then they came for the porn,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't doing porn.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Aaand I'll go ahead and call Godwin's Law on my own post. Sorry.
perhaps you should talk to the other poster to claims that Win7 has been in development since 2004..
The problem is that the people who claim that Win7 is Vista SP1 or SP2 are too lazy to look up these facts. It's well documented that what became Win7 was originally a branch of development called Blackcomb that was started late 2003, early 2004. This then became Vienna in 2006 and then later named Win7. Vista was started as Longhorn after the initial Blackcomb branch was launched. After scrapping thatfirst work, what became the Vista branch took a number of features from Blackcomb and diverged from there. This is why in many ways they have similar features but Win7 is in no way some retouched version of Vista.
One person, one vote. Not, one dollar, one vote. Understand the difference?
One is how things were supposed to work, one is how they work now.
We weren't talking about filesharing sites. He posted some article about a bunch of sites selling counterfeit goods and then claimed that some of them were actually legitimate sites despite nothing in the article backing up his claims. That is what I was asking for evidence on. Maybe you should actually read all the posts in the thread you decide to reply to before posting?
Only the Government can do that. Think about that before you let them pass any laws to 'help us'.
If you're wondering the FCC is thinking, read this:
http://www.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db1209/DOC-303457A1.pdf
Let me summarize:
* They only see this as a checkbox on the Obama administration's to-do list. ("Work on net neutrality." DONE.)
* They don't see any problem with the status quo other than some "isolated incidents"
* They feel they are overstepping their regulatory bounds and this should be an action undertaken by the courts or Congress.
In other words - kiss your open access goodbye.
----- obSig
Huh? How about, "ISPs are required to be net neutral with the exception of email."
Whew, that was hard. Glad we averted spam doomsday...just barely. ;)
Kidding aside, you do seem to be overacting without providing an example of how ISP spam filtering would actually get caught in the wake of a Net Neutrality bill.
meep
The guy can make a good arguments without resorting to shouting or out right ignoring the public.
As senator Al Franken not only ignored the majority of voters, who opposed health-care insurance reform, he ignored the Constitution of the USA too.
TFA makes some good points and breaks down "Net Neutrality" to the lay person who just wants to use the internet. You should try reading it.
I did, and I questioned what he said, did you? He says the FCC already has the power to regulate the internet but he provides no references to back up his statement. Courts have already ruled the FCC does not have those powers.
Not only that but Al Franken voted to censor the net.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Really? Cost of adjusting the Government to you if you don't like it: Buying a presidential election, becoming an outlaw or funding a revolution.
Cost of adjusting a companies behavior to you: Organize a boycott, angry emails to executives, refusing to buy service.
Gee, which one costs more? Which one is more responsive?
The government owns the land, yes, that is salient.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
So we should just make it official, is that what you are saying?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And they're doing all the work (or are paying others to do it.)
I don't think there's a valid parallel for wires in any other fabric of government.
No one has yet given me a technical definition of network neutrality that allows me to block or filter spam.
What are you talking about? There is no definition of network neutrality that says your MTA has to put everything into your inbox, that your MUA has to show you everything, that you have to read everything, etc.
So if I'm understanding you correctly your argument is that since TV is broken in this regard the Internet should be too? A common phrase comes to mind... "Two wrongs do not make a right."
To work properly, voting of any kind requires an informed populace.
Voting with your wallet is certainly not going to work on issues concerning the control of information and disinformation to the general public.
Will
It isn't about who built what. It is about who signed what, who agreed to what. That is basic contract law: you do what you agreed to do. The cable companies agreed to government oversight. No one forced them to agree to that. They should not be allowed to weasel out of their agreements.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Mandate minimum access speed, say 1000kbps to each customer.
1. If carrier does not want to guarantee minimum (or has no ability to do so) speed he cannot offer priority lines for extra pay
2. When carrier chooses to offer higher access speeds for $$$ they need to offer minimum of 1000kbps to their customers
>>>Only one of those fifty wires will be in use. The rest will be wasted
Doubtful. First off it is ONE wire with a bundle of fifty fibers. Laying that costs the same amount in manpower as laying a single cable, and not expensive at all. Second I suspect we'd see the following companies leasing each of those fibers from the State Government:
- Comcast
- Verizon
- Cox
- Cablevision
- Time-Warner
- ATT
- Google
- AppleTV
- MSN
And that's just to start. I expect other ISPs would also lease lines, so that we'd see what we saw back in the 90s Dialup Era (dozens of companies to choose from).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Net neutrality means that the collective mob has used the force of government as an instrument to gain control over other privately owned networks.
The corporations who own the networks *should* have control. It's private property. Every packet traversing their infrastructure is a guest.
Ah, but it's not quite so simple as you like to see it. We have the additional complication that the people not only granted the corporations the rights to lay the cables for their infrastructure over public land and granted a local monopoly for each type of service. I am a supporter of capitalism and free market principles, however it is quite easy to see that the current ISP situation in this country is anything but a free market. The free market breaks down with the presence of monopolies and oligopolies, if we want it to function as it should we must step in from time to time and break them up or prevent their formation.
As someone who lives in a rural area, allow me to explain how I and everyone around me views the situation.
You are correct. Living in a rural area comes with trade-offs. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who lives out here understands that.
For water, we must pay for a well and a pump. For heat, we must pay for propane tanks to be regularly refilled. For trash, we must drive our own refuse to a dumpster facility, as there is no pickup. After a snow, our roads get plowed last if at all, so we use our own vehicles and equipment to do it sooner. For television, we pay for satellite or make do with rabbit ears.
For Internet, we're willing to pay for the wires to be extended to our area.
Oh, wait, we can't. We don't even have the option of paying for the last mile (well, last several miles).
I guess what I'm saying is, your welfare-queen image of rural residents is wrong. We accept that we have to pay more for a lot of things. We don't want subsidies or charity. I and most people around me would be happy to pay the extra cost.
Currently, I pay for a wireless broadband service. I get about 3 Mbps each way. It's decent but I'm sure I would do more (more work, more video chat, more Google Earth browsing, etc.) if we had Fios. But it's clear we never will. (Before the wireless service was available, I had satellite Internet, which is so bad I wouldn't wish it on anyone.)
The Internet is full. Go away.
You seem lost, I believe you're looking for the topic on the Fairness Doctrine.
Wrong. The customers of those companies did not find value in their products. How that came to be is irrelevant. Unless you want to consider every business failure to be a failure of management rather than a success of the market.
Because they shouldn't be doing this anyway? This shouldn't happen regardless of whether we have a choice or not.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
The effort to not only build it, but to maintain it and keep it as a marketable product, is less than trivial.
Plus, I highly doubt you can make an intellectual argument that everyone in Bell's age understood what nuances Net Neutrality would bring with it.
The internet is an exceptionally important part of the United States' infrastructure. The idea of it not being neutral and in the hands of private corporations is just ridiculous.
If the internet's fate should be in the hands of businesses then why not the same for landlines, roads or even the military? Seriously if the government fucks everything up then surely something as important as the military as well as roads should be in the hands of private companies and quit wasting tax payer money on them.
>>>You do realize that Win2k was NT 5.0 and XP was 5.1, right?
Helps if you read my WHOLE post, because then you'll find your answer (near the end). YES I knew that. Anyway I still view Windows7 as what Vista would have been if microsoft had spent an extra year fixing bugs and streamlining the memory usage to fit inside 1/2 gig.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Good corporations, especially large good corporations, are very good at finding the answer to those supposedly open ended questions. If it ends up hurting their profit, they *WILL* in almost every case change course.
Politicians, on the other hand, don't always get the message from elections (ie. 1+trillion lame-duck session spending spree attempt.)
Big business spends millions of dollars to lobby congress and regulators to confer favors. We all agree this is a Bad Thing.
There are two ways to stop this:
1. Pass laws or somehow prevent lobbying or buying favors, such as net neutrality favorable to ISPs.
2. Remove the power to grant of favors, such as any "net neutrality" regulation, which theoretically favors consumers, but in reality will not.
I am in favor of 2, because there will always be a way around 1. There is at least a hope that competition will limit the effect of option 2. The Founding Fathers tried to implement 2 ( 9th and 10 amendments), but the courts have connived to undermine the constitution.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Ahem. Rolling out broadband into a neighborhood is fiendishly expensive and frequently requires digging a fair amount of cabling, which means lots and lots of permits since neighborhoods frown on people routinely digging trenches through their streets or running a rat's nest of overhead wiring. Consequently, the first company (or two, if it's a large enough neighborhood) to install something in the area becomes the only company that bothers to install something in the area.
I'm running into that very problem at my employment - for now, it's Frontier or nothing, though Charter might roll something out this way in the next year or two. Maybe. Don't think Frontier doesn't know it, either - that's why they want $7500/month for a DS3.
Well, according to George W. Bush the Constitution is just a God Damned piece of paper. I don't think disregard of the Constitution takes political sides.
One person, one vote in the matters of the application of force. One dollar, one vote in the matters of market choice. Understand the difference?
IPv6 provides a way for applications to request handling without delay throughout the WAN.
Packets have priority levels. Applications not needing top priority, e.g. email, can voluntarily downgrade their priority.
Video and audio applications could upgrade their packet priority.
The key word here is applications, not ISPs.
Both content sources and recipients are already paying ISPs differentially for bandwidth capability differences and or data transferred
amounts, so why is anything other than application-volunteered packet prioritizing needed?
If various applications (e.g. someone's web server implementation) are cheating and saying all their traffic is video, there is a rather large
and sometimes effective tech community shunning mechanism in place.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You start an ISP that caters to this seemingly large market and make a fortune. Weird how that works, eh?
You're arguing AGAINST the regulations and then expecting us to someone get from that post that you're still okay with them? This isn't actually a free market. You can't give government granted monopolies a fair pass as a free market nor can you give something like this industry that, even without the government, would STILL be a monopoly because of the high costs associated with building the lines in the first place. Furthermore, having to suffer the ridiculous abuses while we wait for them to (hopefully) tank isn't really a fair option for the people. We aren't talking about your favorite brand of soda using something you don't like...we're talking about companies affecting OTHER companies and the people themselves by fucking with the internet. That isn't fair to anyone and serves only to line their pockets more. If we want the internet to continue being a place for innovation and freedom, we can't let this shit continue. If we wait for the market to decide, it will take too long. Things come and go MUCH quicker on the internet and you can destroy good ideas long before they have time to mature by messing around with who gets the best access to us. We don't want that and THEY don't want that. We just have some asshole middle man attempting to extract as much money from being the middle man as he possibly can.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
All that is required are laws which appropriately punish ISP's when they fail to deliver the bandwidth that they have represented to the consumer. The FCC should not be involved since this is a consumer issue.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Excellent summation against Net Neutrality.
how Net Neutrality will be saved or broken is a technological issue
No, net neutrality is a political issue. In a free market it would be a technological issue but governments have already granted large corporations monopolies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You people afraid of government (in general) make me laugh.
I have to imagine you are built like an unlimited fighting champion
and know how to handle an AK.
Otherwise, you're really going to "enjoy" anarchy.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Just tell them it's to prevent kids from getting porn and stopping gays from finding each other on the internet. That will get them behind Net Neutrality in a hurry.
I don't think he's a buffoon, but, you're right, it is a shame that people tune him out. Maybe those who tune him out should take this opportunity to rethink their position on the guy. So few politicians are willing to defend net neutrality it's really nice to see someone buck that trend.
I see no reason to listen to a socialist who wants to censor the net. That is listen other than to fight against him.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
With a heaping dose of mass delusion.
Well, Google has been planning to play around with fiber, hasn't it?
Well, that sounds nice. But we already tried it. Unfortunately, the telecoms somehow managed to weasel out of their agreements. You see, it used to be part of the deal that, if you laid cable on public property, you had to lease out that cable to competitors at the same rate you charged internal departments. That is, you own a cable or telephone line. You let your ISP division use it. The rate you charge them is the rate you have to charge anyone else wanting to use your wires for ISP service. That was WHY we had dozens of ISPs in the dialup era, and why we don't now.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why do you think the government doesn't already have that power? That's my point. You are saying we can't regulate corporate control of the internet because that means giving the power to the government... except that the government already can. All we do is lose MORE control to corporations.
Socialism isn't a dirty word you know.
mediocrity rules, man
You could also say this is a similar to the definition of a 'rogue state' by which all matters of the assembly are only manipulate/influenced for purposes (corporate interests) other than that of civil service.
You can replace "corporate interest" with "Drug kingpin" or "pablo escobar", and it still all sounds the same.
This is all just basic contract and property rights. I know you have libertarian leanings, and let me tell you, this is one reason I distrust libertarians.
Spreading FUD about Libertarians are you? Upholding contracts and rights, including property rights, is what Libertarians stand for.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I have been in IT since 1977. I remember having to purchase additional telephone lines for MODEMs and FAX. I do not wish to return to the bad old days. I'm Right of Genghis Khan; I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the Conservative pundi are so opposed to an obvious goodness. They are either in the employ of Comcast, et. al., are completely ignorant of what Net Neutrality is, or they just wish to be 'good' free marketeers.
I am perplexed.
All I need to argue is that the people who laid cable on public property freely entered into a contract that they do not now honor. Among other things, they said they would lease it to anyone, at their own internal rates. Then they weaseled out of that agreement. That was why you saw a ton of little mom and pop ISPs in the '90s, but you don't now.
The only thing keeping us from ripping up their wires is that agreement. As an example, lets say I have a nice garage, and you have an old junker you want to fix. A let you bring it over and do a lot of work on it, but then you leave it there in my front yard. Well, I will have it hauled away, unless you have some kind of a contract with me stating you can keep it there. And if you break your end of the contract, I can remove the car, because the only thing forcing me to keep it there was that contract, which is only valid as long as both sides honor their part.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well, it's more complicated than that.
The infrastructure that carries most Internet traffic is privately underwritten. But the infrastructure is *not* the Internet. The Internet is a set o protocols.
So what these companies want to do is to redefine the protocols as they run over the infrastructure they own or control. Looked at from one standpoint, this is entirely reasonable. It's their tubes after all, so why can't they redefine the protocols do be whatever the hell the damn well please?
Because the reason that infrastructure was worth the investment in the first place was those protocols. There were dialup services like AOL before the Internet. They were OK, but they weren't a huge bonanza. ISDN existed before the Internet, and in many ways represented a different, point to point connection vision of computer communication that was quite sophisticated in its way. It never took off.
But the Internet took off. Even when most consumers had just dial-up Internet, it took off, cost justifying an investment in broadband like ISDN never did, because of network neutrality. And now that the free and nondiscriminatory architecture of the Internet has made widespread broadband data networking feasible, the providers want to turn back the clock to the days of AOL. They want to run the Internet the way they've been running cell networks, steering users to their preferred information providers.
Is that right? Well if the only thing that mattered was ownership of the tubes, it would be right.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Me crossing the street and putting an X on a box is much easier than me spending a few weeks without internet, or with an inferior service in order to 'vote with my wallet'.
Voting is meant to be easy - it requires very little effort. It doesn't require you to drive a few extra miles not to support the large supermarket.
And governments should in theory be listening to their population. I realise that representational democracy is an absolute failure, but its the best we have.
...but we have the glaring example of the government regulations helping the initial growth of the internet with net neutrality (the net was neutral in the 1990s).
That was then. Today's government seems to revel in Orwellian doublespeak (e.g., the PATRIOT act). So often they propose new laws to do one thing, but when enacted do another. They're now proposing new laws to enforce "net neutrality". I wager they will be anything but neutral.
How great this slashdot story just came out http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/20/2139201/DHS-Seized-Domains-Based-On-Bad-Evidence
please, enjoy your crow
Nicely said.
In this case, I think tthomas48 is equating tiered service with the same approach that cable and satellite companies use for television service. For example in TV tier 1 might get you local channels plus ESPN, Discovery, History, and a few others. Tier 2 is tier 1 plus a couple of channels like Comedy Central, MTV, and NFL that many people would want. Tier 3 might include every offering.
An example Time Warner Cable tiered internet in this scenario might have Tier 1 with CNN.com, google.com, espn.com, etc. They might force you to buy Tier 2 or Tier 3 to get foxnews.com or msnbc.com to protect their own interest in CNN which they own. It might be that netflix.com services are blocked completely.
Posted Anonymously because I have modded
I believe the constitution mentions the citizens of the US should have freedom and general welfare. Capitalists and their lackeys in government are taking those away from you. Capitalism isn't freedom. Freedom is to get to decide things. In democracy (rule of the people) you vote with your... vote. In capitalism you vote with your wallet, which obviously is deeply undemocratic. I think many people think Capitalism has something to do with freedom, when, in fact, in capitalism wealth (and therefore power) is concentrated into ever fewer hands. When fewer people have more power over a growing number of people, that is the opposite of freedom.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
Oh no, Socialism! What ever shall we do, with universal healthcare and trains that actually work? I do hope you reserve an equal portion of ire for the extraordinary rendition crowd and the guys trying to charge Assange for treason against a country he isn't even in.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Markets apply force to people all the time. You want to eat? You do what the boss man says. Economic coercion is always backed up by the government application of force. Owning property should not allow a man to be lord and master of another man, but when property is distributed so unequally, it does. If we were to redistribute property so that every man had control over his own survival, I would support you philosophy. But everyone would have to start out on equal footing for it to work, and we currently have a very unequal distribution of ownership of the means of production. Your philosophy, coupled with our current outrageously unbalanced wealth distribution, will lead to a new feudalism and a reduction in the freedom of the common man.
Governments are simply groups of individuals banding together to protect their interests from powerful people. I don't think we should get rid of government and allow those who currently hold all the power to have even more control over our lives.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You've got a fine point there, but the car would likely have belonged to my dad. And be on your grandad's property.
If you provided even one example of Franken acting against the Constitution, you wouldn't sound so juvenile
He's probably irritated at the heavy handed way the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled there was no merit to re-checking all ~12K discarded absentee ballots in that state after a statistical check on a ~400 of them showed slightly more were for Franken than his opponent. On a race that tight, the opposition will naturally feel all of them should be checked.
What's wrong with being a socialist?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
First off, most cable companies have locally guaranteed franchise agreements (basically, a local monopoly). This is why, for example, AT&T provides phone service in Reno but Sprint provides phone service in Las Vegas, or why Charter is the cable TV provider in Reno but Cox is the cable provider in Las Vegas (to use a set of examples I'm personally familiar with). What the telcos get out of these arrangements is fairly obvious - they can safely build into a neighborhood in their franchise area and know that a competitor won't swoop in and render their several million dollar investment in that neighborhood moot. In theory, the local areas get the guarantee that there will actually be build outs in the local area, even in areas that might not warrant a build-out if competition was allowed in that area, as well as some control over pricing. Point being, CableCompany isn't running that copper to homes "at their own cost", with all the risk such a build-out would entail - they're running it because there's a government-backed guarantee of market presence in that neighborhood when they're done.
This brings me to the answers to your questions. First, cable companies don't "own" the copper - their lessees, with local municipalities serving as lessors of the right-of-ways the cable companies dug through to lay that cable. Consequently, we're talking about a change to the terms of the lease. Why can't we handle this at the local level then? Well, we could, but we'd be looking at several thousand different interpretations of "net neutrality", one for each municipality, which would be a royal pain for everyone involved. What do telcos get out of net neutrality? The same thing they're getting now - the ability to price Internet service at whatever rate they think the market will bear without concern or liability over the specific content that flows over their network. We'd simply be codifying the status quo. What do the people gain? The knowledge that Internet service will be billed the same way as phone, electrical, and natural gas service - it doesn't matter what you're using it for, just how much of it you wish to consume at a given moment. What do the people lose? Well, if ISPs were allowed to engage in rent-seeking behavior and charge discriminatory pricing for specific sites (i.e. charging people more for Facebook access), some markets that might be marginal for broadband service might become more intrinsically profitable since they could extract more value from the broadband connection. Whether anyone would find discriminated service valuable, though, remains to be seen.
>>>But we already tried it.
No we never had the government own a cable of 50 fiber optics, and lease them one at a time to various companies. We've always had a monopoly (typically comcast) or duopoly (comcast + telco) to serve the neighborhood with TV and net. We've never had a real choice across 20 or more companies, so your claim "we tried it" is flat false.
.
>>>you had to lease out that cable to competitors at the same rate you charged internal department
That was never the case where I live (northeast). The County government gave a *monopoly* to whichever company they chose (Comcast: circa 1982)..... there was never any alternate companies, nor any requirement for same. Of course it you can provide a citation to back-up your claim, I'll take a look at it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So perhaps we should be working to reduce the power of government instead of expanding it?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
So when you say that government is the problem. You're really saying YOU are the problem.
Close - I'm saying WE'RE the problem.
Well, they're only protected against that one single source of access. Cable has no defense against wireless and/or DSL, for example. And satellite is everywhere.
That concept may have been valid, but either it isn't any longer or it very soon won't be.
What do telcos get out of net neutrality? The same thing they're getting now - the ability to price Internet service at whatever rate they think the market will bear without concern or liability over the specific content that flows over their network.
Except that's not true, is it? They lose pricing abilities that they presently have in exchange for naught.
The knowledge that Internet service will be billed the same way as phone, electrical, and natural gas service - it doesn't matter what you're using it for, just how much of it you wish to consume at a given moment.
This is also not true. I can't call China (or Verizon) without additional fees. Will long distance be free by legal mandate now as well?
Whether anyone would find discriminated service valuable, though, remains to be seen.
Oh I don't know. I think an internet without any illegal/limitless filesharing on it might be a lot more pleasant. Could you imagine the reduction in traffic if people only downloaded what they had actually purchased, rather than entire seasons of Anime DVD's they never actually intend to watch?
We already did. It was our wallets that funded the inception and creation of the Internet.
>>> That was WHY we had dozens of ISPs in the dialup era
No.
The reason we had dozens of ISPs is because they disguised themselves as standard phone calls. The phone company didn't care if the phone call was a Human speaking or a Computer speaking, and passed both equally. And that's still true today. Nothing's changed except now 50k dialup is inadequate.
The current CATV or Telco doesn't have enough room to carry other ISPs over their Coax or Twisted Pair. Their line to the home is full with their own data, so leasing them would be impossible.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The government already has the power to regulate the internet, given to it by the commerce clause of the constitution. We can choose to use that power for good, and monitor it, or we can choose to abdicate it, and let those with money control everything. We just saw a story yesterday of members of the US government speaking out against centralized control of the internet. It is under the same powers the government has always had that the net has flourished as is. It is only now that corporations want to change how the game is played, to tilt the field more in the favor of large providers. We can let them, and accept what comes, or we can put regulations in place to prevent abuse, then continue to monitor those who have the power.
Continuing to frame this as an "either/or" decision is disingenuous and wrong. This is a Neither/nor situation. We need to make sure BOTH sides are limited in the damage they can do. The government already has the power you are so afraid of, and put out as a bogeyman to scare off any who push for neutrality. They always have. The issue currently is, do we let someone else have that power too, and get to pay a premium to be denied content we want?
The problem is that by allowing corporations to grow into monopolies and mega-corporations who have diversified and subsumed entire markets
And who gave corporations that power? Governments did.
Take any major industry... food for example. If you do a little research you find that it all boils down to half a dozen super corporations, that control everything from the seed that's planted to the packaging that arrives at your grocery store.
Half of the food in my kitchen, back in September it was more like 3/4, I either grew in my garden or I bought at local farmers markets. For about a month this summer I ate salad every day, I picked the greens from my garden. Though I didn't if I wanted to I could have, and might this coming year, join a community supported agriculture(CSA) based local farm. For a set amount of dollars I would have fruit and veggies, produce, delivered from the farm to me weekly. More and more people are buying into CSA.
Do you honestly plan to stop eating at restaurants or buying the 95% percent of the food on the shelves that contains the wheat, soy, or corn products produced by those mega-corporations?
I am a member of 2 co-ops in my are, though there are a bunch more. All of them in my area buy from and support local producers, so called "conventional" and organic.
You know the ones, that are receiving billions of dollars of your tax dollars in subsidies for the privilege of better controlling your life.
I have argued repeatedly against subsidies, whether they are farm subsidies or nuclear power industry subsidies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm telling you, we had laws in place for common carriers that stated they had to lease out their lines at internal rates. By "it" I did not mean your exact plan, I meant one almost exactly like it. Not fifty cables, one per ISP, but bandwidth on the cables that were there.
This was nationwide for telecoms, due to the law, but the deal was never imposed on cable companies because they were not classified as common carriers.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You realize congressmen are immune from prosecution for things they do and say on the floor right? Even without that protection you are the one bringing up treason, not the grandparent, which is very well defined in the Constitution anyways, can you go through the definition and find him guilty point by point on all the criteria?
Needless to say, yes, most every congressman has voted for unconstitutional legislation, and Franken is no exception (Obamacare especially), unless you can look at it and describe what section of the Constitution grants congress the power to pass every single bill they voted for.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Let's break this down into the absolute simplest terms:
Say your Mom says you can go play outside with your friend Jimmy. She says you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and for as long as you want. The only rule is that you can't be mean to anyone.
Would you consider your Mom to be controlling you?
First, that's lamer than a legless Dachshund. Good God that's weak.
Second? Yes, that is control. What other term would you pull out of your ass to call rules that regulate behavior? "Oh, it's NOT control!" Bullshit. That's complete bullshit. It IS control, and you know it.
Third, to make this closer to proposed Net Neutrality regulations, those rules would make you an adult, not a child, and control who you invited over to YOUR house, how long they could stay, who ELSE you MUST invite, and a whole bunch more rules set by your mom on YOUR house.
Still think it's NOT government control?
And do you REALLY think the US government can IMPROVE the internet?
If so, please provide examples of US government actually IMPROVING something.
Remember, this is the same government that brought us the TSA. Do you REALLY think it's a force for good?
That's the essence of the difference between conservatives and liberals. You don't trust the government. We don't corporations.
No one has yet given me a technical definition of network neutrality that allows me to block or filter spam.
Huh? I've not seen a definition of network neutrality that doesn't let you filter spam. The only thing it would prevent is your ISP from blocking spam sent from one mail server to another across its network (i.e. if two mail servers are using the same ISP, the ISP would not be allowed to block spam sent between them). The hint is in the name: the network should be neutral, not the endpoints. You are free to block whatever you like at the end, but the network may not block or prioritise content based on the sender or recipient.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
How many Federal Governments do you have to select amongst? How many local ISP's do you have to select amongst? How many Federal Governments have force to apply against you should you not comply with their rules? How many local ISP's have force to apply against you should you not comply with their rules?
There's nothing wrong with "counting all the votes". If they'd all been counted in 2000, there'd be more than 5000 more US soldiers alive today, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, not to mention the Twin Towers might still be standing and the people inside it alive.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I don't know why, but I feel compelled to mention the argument the telecoms used for weaseling out of their agreement. They basically said, this agreement was imposed when we had a monopoly on Internet delivery. Now that the cable companies and wireless are here, we don't have a monopoly anymore, and should not be forced to let our competitors use our lines.
Make of that what you will. It was all "fair" in that one party (the government) agreed to let the other party out of their contract. But we didn't have to. And we can still reimpose such regulations, we have the moral authority to do so because they still use the public right of way.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No. The law related to DSL, which was available in the nineties. To me, the dialup era was the eighties.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
One way or the other, the free (as in speech) internet will die. You may now select to have the internet controlled by powerful corporations, or by the government (which is controlled by powerful corporations). Aren't you glad you live in a democracy where you can choose?
What happens when the streets get congested? Nothing. Because they who run the highway just need to raise the rates to push out those on the brink of affording it. They reduce their traffic but compensate with higher rates so no $$$ is lost and no effort was needed to improve the highways.
Where is your evidence? Your statement sounds like opinion. When has Franken disregarded the constitution?
From his own mouth, Al Franken supports single-payer health care insurance. Now where in the Constitution is that power given to the federal government? Hint, it doesn't, and as Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said, "To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
you come across as angry and uninformed in your posts.
I am angry, and informed.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But what about the children?
Oh wait...never mind.
Along these lines, has anyone else noticed that in the past year there have been more right wing talking heads working to rehabilitate the reputation of Sen Joe "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy? I've been hearing this more often lately. Just this morning I heard one local and one national talk radio bozo say "Joe McCarthy was right all along." It's like the way about 8 years ago, there were suddenly all sorts of books (most from Regnery Publishing) saying how FDR really didn't help us out of the Depression, in fact he made it worse. You never heard this before that time, probably because there were still some people who had been alive during the Depression who could actually refute such an idiotic revisionism. Anyway, there must have been some Joe McCarthy talking point put out by the Heritage Foundation or Fox News or something. One thing you can bet on in regard to the right-wing media: when you hear the same point twice, there's a reason, since they're all singing from the same hymnal. Except Michael Savage, who is the talk radio equivalent of the unshaven guy at the bus stop smelling of poop with his pants down and doing whirlybirds with his pecker.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The unamended Constitution doesn't even use the word "freedom". The Constitution enforces this thing called liberty (maybe you've heard of it) where people have certain individual rights, chief among these are your right to life (you own yourself), property (you can own things as you own yourself), and liberty (you can make voluntary agreements with other people, possibly to exchange your property, among other things).
Overall, this is called freedom. People like to misuse this word, though, to try and grant abilities to people that don't actually exist. You don't have the "freedom" to steal money from other people, for instance.
You talk about wealth like somehow if one person becomes wealthier, another person must become less wealthy as a result. This is absolutely not true, because a free market is not a zero-sum game, it must have a positive outcome for both parties, otherwise the exchange could not have occurred by definition.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I'm sorry, but an elected politician going against the constitution is treason, as defined by the constitution. While it is your opinion that Obamacare is unconstitutional, you are not a constitutional scholar, and your opinion frankly doesn't matter.
What section grants them the power? It's called the commerce clause, the Supreme Court ruled on that back in the thirties or the forties, I think. And according to the constitution, the Supreme Court are the ones who get to rule on what is constitutional. By definition, if the supremes say it is constitutional, then it is.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
He's probably irritated at the heavy handed way the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled there was no merit to re-checking all
Not at all. Though I don't support Franken, I also didn't like it when there was the question of whether the Senate would even allow him to take his chair. I may not like someone but that's no reason to deny him or her the position that person was elected to. Franken won the seat in the Senate, now it's up to him to follow the Constitution. If he doesn't like it, he can propose to amend it. But until it is amended he better uphold his oath and the Constitution.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You really do not know about the commerce clause? The supremes rules on that decades ago. If the supremes say it is constitutional, then according to the damn constitution, it is. You may not like it, but you do not get to rule on what is constitutional. Your interpretation of constitutionality is only an opinion, as you are not a supreme court justice.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Unless it's not all there is. Since you've now given the "freedom" government a club to use against the "censor" industry. It's just a matter of time until the government "censors" take that club from the "freedom" government.
Don't worry, we won't say we told you so when it happens. It's not the freedom we object to.. it's the club.
That's it. *That's* all there is.
Well, they're only protected against that one single source of access. Cable has no defense against wireless and/or DSL, for example. And satellite is everywhere.
Satellite internet is slow, comparatively expensive, and only available where dishes are allowed or practical. Many suburban areas only have broadband access from either their cable provider or their phone provider. Even then, we've increased the number of competitors from one to three or four, of which one is already priced in a non-neutral fashion (cell phone data plans), two of them (Verizon and Comcast) have already expressed interest in non-neutral pricing, and one of whom has to provide the Internet from space.
What do telcos get out of net neutrality? The same thing they're getting now - the ability to price Internet service at whatever rate they think the market will bear without concern or liability over the specific content that flows over their network.
Except that's not true, is it? They lose pricing abilities that they presently have in exchange for naught.
Abilities that they haven't exercised yet, but have expressed an interest in exercising soon.
The knowledge that Internet service will be billed the same way as phone, electrical, and natural gas service - it doesn't matter what you're using it for, just how much of it you wish to consume at a given moment.
This is also not true. I can't call China (or Verizon) without additional fees. Will long distance be free by legal mandate now as well?
Well, you can't Facebook IM someone in China, either, but that's not something any legislative organization outside of the PRC really has any control over. Thanks to the joys of peerage agreements, however, you can get domestic "unlimited long distance" or per-minute long distance plans if you don't think you're going to consume much long distance - this would be the pricing model that net neutrality enthusiasts are asking for.
Whether anyone would find discriminated service valuable, though, remains to be seen.
Oh I don't know. I think an internet without any illegal/limitless filesharing on it might be a lot more pleasant. Could you imagine the reduction in traffic if people only downloaded what they had actually purchased, rather than entire seasons of Anime DVD's they never actually intend to watch?
We can accommodate that even with net neutrality in place simply by charging more for exceeding certain bandwidth limits. What I don't want, however, is my ISP deciding that, since members of the Democratic Party are pushing for net neutrality, they're only going to allow access to MSNBC, Huffington Post, and so on to those customers that pay an extra fee for the "Political Package". After all, if my ISP can control whether I go to Hulu or ISP-TV, well, what's stopping them from controlling the rest of my Internet browsing?
I just want to point out that you have just accused a US senator of treason without any evidence.
I did not provide evidence that Franken was a traitor because I did not accuse him of being one.
As you want to troll, don't expect me to respond to you again.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Franken was making a case for monkeys in the Senate.
You can't have it both ways (well, logically, at least... of course ISPs may get it both ways, but they shouldn't). If you don't want to be responsible for content, you can't filter on content.
If this were made legally clear, I doubt many ISPs would touch content filtering with a 10' pole. They *want* freedom from liability.
The problem comes from the definition of "bill piecemeal" or "throttle abusively." Who defines that? How is it an abuse to use a service that you WILLINGLY pay for. That you CHOOSE to use and abide by their TOS? If they're following this *MUTUALLY AGREED* contract... please explain where the abuse is? Just because you don't *like* it doesn't make it abuse. All you're doing is proving there is a big market for a service that doesn't have these problems. Maybe you should start your own ISP instead of trying to restrict everyone elses ISP? Just a thought.
Really? Does the First Amendment dictate that all religions or philosophies must be taught in unwilling churches? No? Probably not, right? Might be good to rethink your analogy.
Well, according to George W. Bush the Constitution is just a God Damned piece of paper.
Saying this I hope you don't think I oppose Franken simply because I am Republican. I said the same about Bush treating the Constitution like toilet paper. I am not. I am registered "No Party Preference".
Actually I have voted for Democrats, Independents and independents (there is an Independent party), Reform Party candidates, and Republicans. I vote for the candidate that believes in and will follow the Constitution of the USA. I oppose those who like Thomas Jefferson warned of, will "take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Although it should also be mentioned he pretty much left the state as soon as he was 18 and didn't come back for almost 40 years to try to get a job that would require him to leave again. (Which says a lot to me about what he really thinks of Minnesota.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Citation needed on how I'm not a "constitutional scholar." Let's just read the Constitution, shall we? What part of Article 1 section 8 and/or amendment saying "Congress shall have power to enforce this article" grants congress the power to force citizens to buy a privately produced service? I can't find it. I can't find a single claim anywhere in the Constitution or its writings like the Federalist that argued they have any such power. Not even the Anti-federalist papers said the Constitution threatened this (it made the claim that the Executive branch would force people to do things they didn't have the power to, like regulating exchanges).
Let me ask you, name just one power that the 10th amendment prohibits to the Federal government that the states have?
By definition, if the supremes say it is constitutional, then it is.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, not the supreme court. By definition.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
In case you were wondering, these incoherent stalker posts don't exactly make you look good.
And who do you propose NetFlix should recommend in areas where there is only one provider? You can't have competition without competitors.
It may not be to you but it is to me. Anything that limits what I can do even if I am not harming another person is bad. Forcing me to pay for health insurance I don't want, is bad. Censoring the internet, like Al Franken voted to do is bad. Okay, okay I know that censorship isn't a socialist idea but it's still bad. Forcing me to pay someone else's health care costs is socialistic. As is single-payer health insurance.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I mean as far as I can tell with this guy it's all a game. He's good at it though I'll give him that. Basically his deal as far as I can tell is he likes to put together a series of facts to convince you of something that is utterly not true. (You know, like the DHMO thing which consists of facts that are actually correct and paint a picture that is utter nonsense which is pretty funny.) I mean it'd be like if Rush said he wonders about John Edwards honesty and then pointed out when Edwards was younger he'd often go into restaurants and instead of paying when he was finished he'd leave when the staff wasn't looking. (BTW, this is true but it's true because Edwards mentioned eating at Wendy's. You pay before you eat and the staff doesn't give a shit what you do after you get your food.) That's the sort of game Franken plays.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
You said "Because to him the Constitution of the USA is nothing more than toilet paper, to be disregarded when it gets in the way of his agenda."
According to the constitution, it is treason for a senator to disregard the constitution. By claiming he disregards the constitution, you just called him a traitor. But I will take your statement here as a retraction of your previous statement.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You really do not know about the commerce clause?
You mean the interstate commerce clause? The one that allows the feds to make commerce between the several states regular?
How does that allow the feds to station a federal agent in the doctor's office watching the examination? Are we using roving doctors offices and hospitals that travel the freeways treating the peoples?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_clause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_Reorganization_Bill_of_1937
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcia_v._San_Antonio_Metropolitan_Transit_Authority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Atlanta_Motel,_Inc._v._United_States
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and the constitution says that the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of laws, and decides how it is interpreted. Someone has to rule on how it is interpreted because, for example, you and I disagree on its interpretation. We need an arbiter, and the constitution says that that is the supreme court.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
While it is your opinion that Obamacare is unconstitutional
Well I'm a constitutional scholar, as every US citizen should be. Just for your edification, here's the opinion of an actual Constitutional judge - the highest federal judicial opinion rendered regarding Obamacare so far:
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Not so fast there spanky, you're saying that GM buying into toxic real estate was their customer's fault? Riiiight....
I love the short-term memory loss of the politically motivated.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Apart from your slippery slope argument...
How is the information dystopia you just described *any* different than what we have now, in regards to getting information from anyone other than mega-corporations?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
There is no evidence. The "he hates the Constitution" and "he's a socialist" retorts are boilerplate right wing labels for liberal and moderate politicians and candidates, or knee jerk dog-whistle political responses to legislation they dislike. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard it uttered that Obama has "shredded the Constitution". These same people didn't say a word when Bush called the Constitution a piece of paper. Ironically, most of these "Constitution protectors" hate the 14th Amendment. But you're labeled a patriot if you propose repealing it, not a Constitution hater.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
I believe the constitution mentions the citizens of the US should have freedom and general welfare
Freedom yes, but requiring people to buy health insurance denies freedom. And "general welfare" does not mean what you think it does. The USA's Founding Fathers set out exactly what the federal government can do, the Constitution of the USA says exactly that. And nowhere in it will anybody find socialized medicine in it. Hell neither health nor medicine can be found in it anywhere, and as Thomas Jefferson said "a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."
Capitalism isn't freedom.
But free markets and free trade is freedom. Franken wants to limit both, he supports fining people for not buying insurance and he supports censoring the net.
think many people think Capitalism has something to do with freedom, when, in fact, in capitalism wealth (and therefore power) is concentrated into ever fewer hands.
No it's you who are mistaken. That is not capitalism, what you describe is corporatism and the corporate aristocracy Thomas Jefferson warned of. Or as El Duce, Mussolini, said Fascism is corporatism.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Well "revisionist history" cuts both ways, doesn't it? In fact that term is only used when you don't agree with the outcome. If you support the new view, you call it a "view of history from a modern perspective."
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Troll
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Constitution only allows the Supreme Court to rule on specific cases. They do not change the meaning of the constitution under any circumstances -- it is the job of all the branches to ensure that any branch is not violating the Constitution by using power not granted to them. Justices will refuse to comment on generalizations for this reason, because they only apply the law, they do not define it.
As such, case law can be used to apply an opinion to a large number of similar cases at once, but it does not redefine the plain language of the law. The Supreme Court has entirely reversed its opinion over years -- especially over the FDR era -- but no one would argue this changed the meaning of the Constitution in any way.
In particular, in order to fall under the jurisdiction of Congress' interstate commerce clause, the regulation must affect an exchange being made over state lines as it is happening. Also note that the word "regulation" means something entirely different than just power -- it meant to "keep regular". The Interstate commerce clause gave Congress (I love this) the coercive power to enforce free trade, that is, to prohibit states from establishing tariffs and other taxes (same effect as "Congress shall have power to enforce this article" clauses seen in amendments). Unfortunately, the health insurance mandate falls under neither interstate nor commerce. In fact, you can't even argue that it affects interstate commerce since buying health insurance across state lines is (unconstitutionally) illegal! Assuming that the "affects interstate trade" argument is even true (it isn't), you would have to successfully argue that the non-purchase of health care somehow affects the illegal interstate market health insurance!
Go ahead, name just one case where the states have authority that the federal government does not, because of the 10th amendment.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I see no reason to listen to a socialist who wants to censor the net.
Falcon
Here is a better link for that piece of proposed legislation that clearly shows that it hasn't even come up for a vote yet. The "vote" you, techdirt and cnet are reporting about merely brings the bill out of committee and to the Senate floor...nothing more.
The People drove Circuit City into bankruptcy.
Also GM.
And Wards.
They can do the same with any other corporation they don't like. Look at Blockbuster which is teetering on the verge of death.
Circuit City had plenty of competition, from both big and small electronics stores.
GM had plenty of competition, from other US and foreign brands.
Don't know Wards so can't speak to that.
Blockbuster is being displaced because of Netflix, video-on-demand or downloaded movies (legal or otherwise)--the latter two which, incidentally, requires massive infrastructure and backing of the entertainment industry to work. A true startup has no chance--only a large corporate expansion into such a service has even a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding.
In Canada there are three main "choices" for cell phone service: Bell, Rogers, and Telus, or their subsidiary brands. Despite this "competition" plans require 3 year contracts to get the full subsidy, the longest in the world. People constantly complain about poor service from all three, but all that really happens is they get roughly equal amounts of pissed off customers switching between them.
When's the last time a near-monopoly, last-mile service company (power, water, phone, cable, internet, etc) gone into bankruptcy and actually dissolved? This isn't rhetorical; I can't think of any off the top of my head.
Which they can do whether Net Neutrality is instituted, or not.
What is your point?
Not when it's so obviously orchestrated - it's fairly clear that people are pushing their own agenda and using media outlets to do it.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
It's private property.
It's "private property" that was built with billions of dollars of forced rights-of-way, tax breaks, and countless other government subsidies. When the telecoms want to actually spend what it costs to build their network instead of shoving a large portion of it off onto others, then we'll talk.
From my view:
Source/destination based throttling is bad. If your network cant handle it, throttle all traffic.
Protocol based QoS:
"Assigning bulk traffic a lower priority so high priority traffic is uninterrupted." Is okay.
"Limiting bulk traffic at a fixed rate, regardless of network conditions." Not okay.
("Low" and "high" priority determined by latency sensitivity of a given protocol, not business interest.)
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34612834 [slashdot.org] Seems the ac confronted hairyfeet with quoted testimonials of what he himself has as results, of no malware on his system and those of others, and then hairyfeet ran away once the very crux of his argument was destroyed. Hairyfeet said it was simple to hijack a hosts file by malware attack, and the very crux of the ac's arguments that he doesn't get malware. The ac even had others saying the same in quoted testimonial and he offered to put up more of them from others also. Hairyfeet wasn't successful just evidenced by hairyfeet running away from the ac's reply.
You're clearly too young to have experienced the old ATT or Standard Oil.
You got me on Standard Oil but not on AT&T. And they both eventually fell. No company can maintain control forever, even if some manage for a while.
You must be too young to remember the Roman Empire. They were not regulated away you know...
Um, yes, AT&T and Standard Oil "fell", so to speak -- but they fell precisely because *regulations* were applied to break them up: AT&T's breakup, and Standard Oil's breakup. This history makes your Roman Empire comparison something of a non sequitur, turning the Romans into the oranges to compare with AT&T's and Standard Oil's apples. I like a good fruit salad, but this one was a bit off, I'm afraid.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
What's wrong with being a socialist?
Nothing, as long as you are willing to own up to being one.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Darn. I hit cancel by mistake, so I lost my longer post.
Anyway, to summarize:
I think it would be trivial to exclude quality of service decisions from net neutrality ideology. Many laws are vague. That is what juries, judges, and trials are for: making (hopefully!) common sense decisions about the law based on the intent of that law.
Filtering spam, or cutting off a botnet, would be obviously different (to a jury) than you making, say, Netflix really slow, while at the same time opening a competing "online streaming video store".
The "vote" you, techdirt and cnet are reporting about merely brings the bill out of committee and to the Senate floor...nothing more.
In other words, he didn't even try to stop it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It denies freedom!!!
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
free speech are better enforce by people rather by gov
I know I shouldn't respond but, troll
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
And in which of these options did the people have the choice "This company or abstain"?
People will accept the crappiest service, as long as they get ANY service. And it's not like opening a new provider is trivial enough to just say "Well, if they get bad enough someone else will provide better service."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You clearly do not understand how monopolies can arise in areas that lack regulation and how they are nearly impossible to get rid of without regulation. I would suggest you educate yourself before you start making proclamations on how things should be done.
Perhaps you do the same, educate yourself. The only way small groups of companies gain power is by government granted monopolies. And when an industry is finally regulated, it's usually the industry that writes those regulations. Usually to keep anymore competition out.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
So if company X has the de facto monopoly as ISP in an area, you say it's ok because anyone can open a new ISP, right?
Ok, then please go ahead, I'm certain a lot of people will switch to your service.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
According to history, the former. Provided you have the funds.
But where does the "becoming an outlaw" factor into this? When did the corporations that bought our current politicians become outlaws?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, according to Merriam-Webster (which dictionary are you using)?
Which implies government controlling corporations, not the other way around. Wikipedia avoids defining it by simply saying the definition is "controversial". Mussolini, the original Fascist, certainly had control of the corporations, but it could more accurately be called a partnership. In fact, whenever I see politicians proposing "public-private partnerships" as a solution to some problem, I have to wonder why people don't recognize it as a fascist idea.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Sure, I'm a socialist. I believe that public education, health care, and infrastructure are good things to have. Capitalism is a nice theory, but taken to its extreme, you get crap like the latest wall street meltdown.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Not when it's so obviously orchestrated - it's fairly clear that people are pushing their own agenda and using media outlets to do it.
Yes, I know. Like I said, it cuts both ways.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Duh! I know all about the interstate commerce clause, though you didn't (you did leave out the "interstate" part). And congress could have used the clause but it didn't. If congress wanted to use it they could have said "No state shall bar a person in one state from buying health insurance in another state." That would have been a proper use of the interstate commerce clause.
And you are deciding now what is constitutional, even saying the USSC already decided that "that decades ago". I bet you can not produce one Supreme Court ruling giving the feds the authority to regulate health care or insurance. If they had then a federal judge never would have found the law unconstitutional. But of course you and not me or a judge gets to decide what's unconstitutional.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Government enforces contracts; right? Isn't this what every libertarian believes?
So the government enforces the contracts that the ISPs signed when they were granted right-of-way to public land. In those contracts there were (hopefully) clauses about benefit-of-the-public-good (otherwise, why on Earth would the government get involved with something like this?) If they are abusing the public trust, their contract should be revoked, they should lose their investment in their infrastructure, and it should be sold off to someone that won't abuse the public trust.
Kind of like "mom says you can lay your cables, but you have to abide by our rules and be nice to everyone." Do you understand the analogy now? The contract between the kid and the mom is like the contract between the government and the ISPs?
Your irrational fear of the "nanny state" is what concerns me.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Well in my view, government intervention is what made the Wall Street meltdown so bad. And it probably would be all over by now if the government hadn't stepped in to socialize all the debt, including bailing out foreign banks and their chosen money monopolists handing out $12.3 trillion to their favored corporations. Companies that fail, including financial companies, should be allowed to fail. Instead, we'll be dealing with the consequences for decades.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Is Comcast de-prioritizing Netflix? No. I think you just argued why Comcast should NOT be neutral. If they were NOT neutral, then Netflix would have a better chance of working even if their transit link gets saturated. Or are you saying the government should tell ISP's how much bandwidth they should buy for their transit links? It seems to me that Comcast has the correct Net Neutral solution to the Netflix problem. That is, they should create a Yahoo!-like peering agreement with Netflix. If Netflix doesn't go for it, then that is their problem and customers will suffer or go with another ISP.
Considering I have the choice of Cox or... well, Cox for my High Speed Internet, there isn't any "voting with my wallet" to be had.
And just about any other method you could come up with for internet isn't comparable. Dial Up and Satellite are not high speed, and are not suitable for streaming Netflix on. Cellular internet is not comparable either, as it isn't designed to function as a primary net connection, and limits you to 5GB. Any other 4G technologies aren't available in my area.
No, you are the wrong one here. ISPs have been given public rights of way to lay their lines on public lands, along with being able to lay lines across private lands without compensating the owners. Since they have done so, it is no longer just their property.
That supporting government regulation in the name of "Net Neutrality" is a sure fire way to help those in government who wish to expand government power.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I've been on the fence about network neutrality since it first became an issue a few years back. On the one hand, with almost every ISP in the country being a monopoly in their area, I understand why it is important to have some way to keep the monopoly in check. On the other hand, as a network admin, I understand why network neutrality is a serious impediment to building efficient networks. Consequently, I'm really torn on which side has the most compelling argument.
:/
However, if Al Franken has spoken out in support of network neutrality, I'm really having to work to avoid the reflexive, knee-jerk reaction to simply oppose it out of hand.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Well, I pretty much agree with what you said here although I suspect I find the Constitution a bit more malleable than you do. It isn't the same world we live in as it was when it was written. I too have voted for Republicans in the past but I just haven't found any lately worth voting for. Any R I might find palatable isn't very likely to make it past the party primary.
Troll
Falcon
I couldn't have said it better myself.
Spam is speech? I thought it was noise.
This was a story in a tabloid newspaper for idiots. A newly-elected Conservative MP proposed it but she is a nobody. The Register has a more accurate report.
Thanks for sharing, but what does that have to do with Al Franken?
you have a narrow view of the internet. does your traffic go over the nsfnet? or any (d)arpa network? Or does it go over abovenet? sprint? etc? Did the government fund the build out of FIOS? Or perhaps they paid for the Cablevisions network? Likewise you have no clue about profits as shown by your comment. Suppose they invested $10B? Is making $1B after tax obsene given that this is a business and not a supposedly 'risk free' government bond? Should they only be allowed to make $0.1B (1%?) Do you honestly think there would be a business in that case?
[note to slashdot moderation: This post is not meant to be partisan trolling. Rather, it is meant to point out the "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!" fallacy of the above post.]
Sureh, but then we would also be on the hunt for "ManBearPig" instead of Osama Bin-laden. (Wile simultaneously pushing Monsanto Corporation's biotoxic seeds on the rest of the world with wreckless abandon-- more than we already are anyway.)
Al Gore was/is every bit as bad of a candidate as was Bush Jr. was/is--
Or, have you already forgotten how much of a total douche Albert Gore has revealed himself to be, what with his two faced antics about being green while simultaneously harboring one of the most obscene carbon footprints owned by a single individual nationwide? Should we bring up his other hypocritical activities as well?
While GWB was without question bad for the US, and was considerably naive about foriegn policy, at least he wasn't batshit crazy like Albert Gore has revealed himself to be.
Then you also have the joys of Joe Lieberman. Don't tell me you have already forgotten about good ol' Joe and his rather vocal position on Julian Assange and Wikileaks? You know, how he's basically called for an illegal extradition and assasination job on a citizen of a foriegn country for a non-existant crime? Yeah. Sounds like a Jewish version of Dick Cheney to me. [at least I think he's Jewish anyway...] Just the kind of person I want on the presidential cabinet...
Long story short, We've had the choice between a giant used douche and a festering turd sandwich for our presidential candidates for the past 2 elections at the very least-- Probably more than that.
PLEASE don't delude yourself into thinking that "Everything would have been better if only $Candidate had been elected!"
When both parties nominate evil space mutants, it doesn't matter if you vote for Kang or Kodos. Both are equally as bad.
No, my traffic goes over what resulted from the free giveaway of government funded infrastructure, and what resulted from the continual grants and funding given to telcos and backbone providers to upgrade their systems, which they then use to pay higher dividends to their investors rather than pay for said infrastructure improvements. Take a look at the number of bills that have given money to just this purpose, money that was never spent on what it was intended for. Take a look at the Telecommunications act of 1996, which gave serious concessions to telcos, in exchange for what was to have been serious infrastructure investment, that just sorta never happened. So yeah, I think 1 billion in profit extracted from me twice, meant to pay for improvements they now say they don't have money for, is too much profit.
The cable company reported a net income of $778 million, up from $738 million for the same period last year. Comcast is benefitting from the federally-mandated switch to digital television, and the increased number of subscribers led to $8.84 billion in revenue, a 5.3% year-over-year increase.
Sure, I'm a socialist. I believe that public education, health care, and infrastructure are good things to have. Capitalism is a nice theory, but taken to its extreme, you get crap like the latest wall street meltdown.
The meltdown has shit to do with Capitalism in theory or practice. Read "End the Fed" by Ron Paul to get a semi-libertarian perspective. Learn why government ought not be loaning money (in particular, money it has to borrow or print). What is it about being a socialist that makes you so fucking stupid? SERIOUSLY, what the fuck is it?
Spam is already illegal.
OMG are you fucking kidding me? How stuipid are you? Quick, take an IQ test online and report back to us. CAN-SPAM literally legallized the act of spamming. LITERALLY. Read the google links, moron. Pay attention to this one.
Hey, fuckface, guess what? You can't sue for recovery for CAN-SPAM unless you are an ISP. Routing packets to your mother won't cut it as that has been tried. CAN-SPAM (or the notion that Spam is illegal) is the absolute worst example any fucking moron can bring to the table in defense of government intervention.
Imagine a law that required rapists to follow a set of complex, pointless, and untrustworthy procedures. These procedures, once followed, legalizes their rape (of you). The cherry on top is that this same law prevents you from suing for damages. It nullifies any state law that says you can sue for damages.
If they had then a federal judge never would have found the law unconstitutional.
I believe you meant to say "...one out of three federal judges examining the issue so far, who is also connected to anti-healthcare reform, never would have found the law unconstitutional."
Just because one lower-court activist judge has a problem with the law doesn't mean the law is actually unconstitutional. Of course, we could change that if you don't mind throwing away the constitution in which you only claim to believe.
It all comes down to the usual fear sets. Of the list below, which do you fear and which do you think can and will protect you from the ones you fear:
Corporations
Churches
Governments
Bandit Armies
The list hasn't changed in all of human history, and the tools for manipulating people haven't had to change either.
You really believe that? Here is where all of these arguments fall through. The evil "single-payer" system we want in health care mirrors another single payer system: your local fire department. I don't remember seeing very much anti-fire department posts on here, or really ever hear too many people complaining about that. We all pay taxes to support our local fire department, and when someone's house catches on fire, they respond. The same principle is in effect with a single-payer health care system. And since I haven't seen anything making my fire department unconstitutional, I think we could fit in health care. If it is ran with the same efficiency of say, social security (two cents of every dollar goes to administrative costs) we might actually come up with something good.
I don't think anything here is so provocative as to merit citations... and always, this is only my opinion....
Member of American Sarcasm Society - Motto: "Like we need your help!"
It's said about every sitting president I can remember from one side of the other since Nixon was in office. It's pulled up whenever something is being done that isn't liked by some people. And that "some people" has no ideological boundaries, it's meant to mean not all the people.
Also, when Bush made that comment, it was at a correspondence dinner in which it's customary to make fun of how you perceive the press as seeing you. In other words, it was a joke made at an appropriate time and didn't mean what you think it meant. That's also why none of the democrats in high positions made anything of it either. It's only the lower hanging people who either have no clue or got their clue from someone starting shit on the internet somewhere that is taking it completely out of context.
Wow... where do you make this shit up from?
Treason in the US is only levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. and they can only be convicted or get the death penalty if two witnesses swear they saw you doing it or if the accused openly admits to it.
Not only is what you just said factually incorrect, but I think you seriously degraded the IQ of everyone here with that. This is basic constitutional understanding here. Grasping for straws to make a point is one thing, but doing so on something that is so easily checked is pure stupidity. I mean this is covered in elementary school, even in the public school systems. Or at least it was when I was in school.
Actually, the constitution does not give the supreme court the power to rule on it's interpretation. That is nowhere in the constitution at all. The supreme court derived this power after being established because it's the only constitutionally mandated court so when they started settling conflicts with the constitution, it wasn't challenged.
And no, the constitution was never meant to be interpreted. It was meant to me a concise and to the point document that settled it's own conflicts by the statement of article 9 in the bill of rights "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
That statement means that if something is in conflict with the constitution, it has to be worked out in a way that doesn't take rights away from the people. When the constitution was formed, and up until recently in our history, the people had all the rights that was not already surrendered to the government by the constitution.
One more thing, while you are bringing up this commerce clause argument, it should be noted that not even the US government attempted to validate the Obama care under it. In other words, you seem to be claiming that you know something that Obama and others do not which is illustrated by their refusing to make that claim when it was challenged.
In related news: Al Franken makes cases for everything else good in the world, and Washington ignores him.
I tend to think of it as noise, but the fact is, by the offered definitions and categories, I am "censoring" the Internet.
This is why I don't take posts like that as evidence of having considered the issues; it's all buzzwords and sound bites without any connection to reality. It amazes me how quickly people who are outraged by incoherent sound bites from the RIAA and friends turn around and applaud incoherent sound bites that say "net neutrality" or "censorship" somewhere in them.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Actually, a great deal of spam isn't illegal. Or if it is, it's only temporarily illegal. Some kinds of spam might be illegal because they're unauthorized access, but if it were illegal to not authorize them (because it isn't Net Neutral to unauthorize some accesses ut not others), then they wouldn't be illegal anymore...
But you're right, it may not be the best example. It's just the one that most jumps out at me as a case where I have been blocking or throttling traffic because it would cost too much to process it. I've been doing that for years, and now suddenly people are saying "oh, you should never be allowed to throttle traffic just because you think it's too expensive."
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Not all spam is email -- consider blog comments. :)
I don't see how much simpler or more obvious the example can be. I block spam. Net neutrality bill is passed. Spammer sues on the grounds that I am blocking his traffic. Law requires me to treat all incoming traffic equally, not giving preference to some traffic over other traffic.
Even if he doesn't win, the mere fact that he's got a case that would likely sound plausible to a not-very-technical judge means he can cost me a ton of money -- enough that it's not cost-effective to block his spam.
I can't comprehend which part of this isn't completely, totally, obvious. You advocate a law that no one can ever block traffic they don't like. Then you ask how this could affect people who block traffic they don't like.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Woah there. Think it through a little more:
The ISP is the network, not the end point; my computer is the end point. But I want the ISP to filter mail, because if they don't, I can't actually use the internet, because their traffic is all tied up sending spam which I then filter.
Think about what happened to spam volumes when McColo went off line. Remember that?
Now imagine what happens if McColo can say "you can't stop peering with us, only actual end users are allowed to filter the email we send."
That's network neutrality. If the upstreams are allowed to say "come to think of it, we don't like how you use bandwidth", then we don't have network neutrality. If they're not, then McColo stays online, because they're buying bandwidth and using it.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
By the time mail gets that far, it's already way too expensive. I want spam sources filtered early enough that it actually does some good for my bandwidth.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I think it is worth pointing out that the FCC isn't the DOJ or DHS or the FTC. All of these arms have different missions, even if we like to throw all of them in the basket of "the government".
We love to say, "Would you like to hand it over to the government?", but no one ever asks "What part of the government?". We just lump it all together into "government = bad" and some days, I think we let our trains of thought run unproductive. Of course I wouldn't want it put into the hands of someone like the DOJ, their whole mission is to prosecute as many people as possible.
This is who you are all clamoring to have deciding if the internet is being used "fairly" or not. Mark Lloyd the White House appointed FCC Diversity Czar: He would love to bring back the fairness doctrine and insert central planning into the marketplace to decide what people should be allowed to say on the air and what consumers should be allowed to hear. He will say that he looks to improve "localism" and promote diversitywhich will unsurprisingly silent voices he disagrees with and promote like minded thinkers. Since he doesn't like the fair competition in a free marketplace he believes in total Government control of the market. Which has proved disastrous over and over again in history. The free market has created the most fair distribution of wealth and highest standard of living of any economic system in the history of man. Not a theory... not some idea an elitist intellectual cooked up to better control us sheep but a practical and natural allocation of resources based on individual rights, product/labor value, and supply/demand. Below are his opinion about the American idea of freedom of speech and ultimately individual rights... These are the type of people you are trusting with your information with the first step being labeled "Network Neutrality". "In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country. And we've had complaints about this ever since." - Mark Lloyd "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies." - Mark Lloyd "The other part of our proposal that gets the 'dittoheads' upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don't want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community." - Mark Lloyd "This... there's nothing more difficult than this. Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem. We're in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power." - Mark Lloyd Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_lloyd.html#ixzz18j9oIxxw "[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance." - Mark Lloyd at the FCC.from his book http://www.amazon.com/Prologue-Farce-Communication-Democracy-America/dp/0252073428 Here he is praising Chavez's crackdown on the media during a speech at a media reform seminar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ffAP5ixhg "President Obama's diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to "step down" in favor of minorities, prescribed policies to make liberal talk radio more successful, and described Hugo Chavez's rise to power in Venezuela 'an incredible revolution.'" - Washington Times
It's really not that hard to stipulate something to the effect that carriers aren't allowed to bill by source or destination of a packet.
No, it is not.
Want to bet they have written nothing like that?
Want to bet that after the carriers are told exactly how they are allowed to bill for traffic, eventually they will also be told what traffic is appropriate? It's just a slight modification. It can start with child porn. It's very easy to amend a structure once in place...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Of course, because as history has repeatedly demonstrated that whenever there is small exclusive concentration of wealth and power it always works out best for the people.
I will assume that was sarcasm.
If so then why are you trying to concentrate power in a small group of people (the FCC)?
Your statement was 100% correct. Which is why I am against net neutrality, I am attempting to prevent the concentration that you say you fear but act to impose.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In other words "boogety boogety boogety, don't let them fix what's wrong because then they're gonna com take away your internets!" I see the Faux News Republican chumps have you in their grip.
Well, according to George W. Bush the Constitution is just a God Damned piece of paper. I don't think disregard of the Constitution takes political sides.
Technically, it's four pieces of paper.
That supporting government regulation in the name of "Net Neutrality" is a sure fire way to help those in government who wish to expand government power.
Which is a pretty ridiculous argument, as net neutrality has nothing to do with expanding government power. If anything, it has the opposite effect, as it prevents the government from expanding its power via its corporate partners.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Have you seen the FCC proposals that they are calling "net neutrality" proposals?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Saying this I hope you don't think I oppose Franken simply because I am Republican. I said the same about Bush treating the Constitution like toilet paper. I am not. I am registered "No Party Preference".
So, if you are of no party preference, then why did you say that you are a Republican in a preceding sentence?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Sounds horrible. I don't want to have to change my software every 5 years just because fashion has changed. It's bad enough I have to do that with clothing or cars.
"But the draft Order would effectively permit Internet providers to block lawful content, applications, and devices on mobile Internet connections. Mobile networks like AT&T and Verizon Wireless would be able to shut off your access to content or applications for any reason." - Franken
Well Mr. Franken..... you could just change providers. VirginMobile doesn't block anything. Neither does Sprint or Clear.
You only need to regulate monopolies where customers have no other choice, Not free markets where there are many choices.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yes, I think we would, because that's how it was with the standard utilities before they became monopolized by the government. I don't know how everyone can get away with claiming we have a free market in telecom when we haven't for over 100 years. We never even gave it a chance. There used to be 200 electric companies in my section of Ohio. It's a simple matter of history. You can even see that on the wikipedia page for Ohio Edison.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Edison#Ohio_Edison
It's important to know that it doesn't say WHO consolidated them. That's because we all know the government is who did it.
Even on the AT&T page, we can even see that on A Brief History: The Bell System
http://www.corp.att.com/history/history3.html
We accepted government consolidation and monopolization of the utility companies under the assumption that it would be better to have regulation than competition. Then it somehow gets blamed on free market competition. Well, I think it's safe to say it was a dismal failure...
The Constitution absolutely prohibits Socialism. Government controlling the factors of production was never even dreamed of when the Constitution was ratified; the founders of the country would have considered such a notion not only untenable but a pathetic joke. The Constitution mandates a system of limited government, constrained to very specific functions. Socialism as a doctrine is anathema to any notion of liberty one can conceive of, and the Constitution was created for the preservation of liberty by narrowly constraining the power of the State. Only an utter moron, sophist or nihilist or other form of degenerate cretin would claim Socialism is Constitutional.
As for Franken, he's Progressive. He's a proponent of unconstitutional, enormous government. Wake up and smell the coffee.
With $1trillion of government funding they built the internet. Since they who pay the piper make the tune, why can't government control what ISPs do?
Or is government waste unimportant to you?
I'm "Constitution protector". I'm glad the 14th amendment is there and don't have any problems with it at all.
The 16th amendment, though... I'd love to see that one go.
Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.
This is not censorship. Censorship would be if the state prevented you from hosting that website anywhere
Censorship does not require a state actor. Untangling the definition of censorship: censorship = the act or practice of censoring; censor (verb) = to examine and act upon as a censor; and censor (noun) = any person who supervises the manners or morality of others
In this particular case, I agree that Acme ISP blocking the anti-ACME-ISP website is not censorship, but only because their decision is amoral. They are blocking access for monopolistic (financial) reasons, not because they think anti-ACME-ISP will harm-the-children.
The analogy holds because both arguments are based on the slippery slope fallacy. If we allow the government to pass a regulation that defends our rights, then they will use that power to remove our rights...
"Whatever exists here is mine..." -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34612834
APK
P.S.=> Including ITT Tech Man, Professor hairyfeet (who got owned by not only proof from myself, but also others here on /., with more by request no less (but, I think what's there does the job - my std. "Kung Fu" has been HUGELY administered, & it was, as-per-my-usual? Just too, Too, TOO EASY... 2 EZ!)) RofFlMaO... apk
"Whatever exists here is mine..." -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34612834
APK
P.S.=> Including ITT Tech Man, Professor hairyfeet (who got owned by not only proof from myself, but also others here on /., with more by request no less (but, I think what's there does the job - my std. "Kung Fu" has been HUGELY administered, & it was, as-per-my-usual? Just too, Too, TOO EASY... 2 EZ!))... RofFlMaO... apk
Just wonderin'. How many Slashdotters have written their congresscritters to encourage them to support real Net Neutrality? Posting on Slashdot might be fun, but it doesn't carry much weight with Congress. Letting Congress know what you think might do some good.
The Supreme court's interpretation is only an opinion, although generally respected by other legal entities. If the USSC declared that the sky was purple, that wouldn't make it so.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Local fire departments are not federal creations. There are lots of things which the federal government isn't supposed to do that local governments can and do implement.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Bush never actually said that. The only source for that quote is from Capitol hill blue.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
So you acknowledge that part of the problem is local government restricting rats nests of overhead wires? You may agree with their reason, but those restrictions do reduce competition.
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Well let's see what's needed, if a DS3 is $7500 a month, that's a 100 clients at $75 a month or of you have more clients it's cheaper. Then there's long range wireless, Wi-Fi in a mesh network. The rural areas are the ones most desperate for Broadband as most Broadband companies don't see a market for them, due to cost's. These are just some ideas, but you can see there's a niche market for anyone enterprising.
It also contains more good resources than TV ever did. What's your point?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Helps if you read my WHOLE post
Why? You don't give us the same courtesy, so why should we show it to you?
Citation provided :)
So the liberal perspective says that net neutrality regulations should be imposed on carriers to avoid handing over effective control of the internet to a few mega-corporations. While the conservative perspective says that net neutrality regulations should not be imposed to avoid handing over effective control of the internet to a few mega-corporations.
What am I missing here? I guess if corporations are going to control the Internet either way, I'd rather at least make them work for it.
The conservative perspective is get rid of the government regulations that allow a few mega-corporations to have effective control over the Internet. The liberal perspective is "Well, that made things worse. Obviously, we need more of it."
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Guys, you really need to start parsing these kinds of statements. What a hacker means by "net neutrality", what a politician means by "net neutrality" and what corporations mean by "net neutrality" are three completely disjoint sets. And of the three, the hacker's definition is not the one anyone in this debate is using. The question is not really net "neutrality" but instead "who will control the net and to whose ends".
So, if you are of no party preference, then why did you say that you are a Republican in a preceding sentence?
Point to where I did say I was Republican. I bet you can't, because I did not say I was.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
They gave regulatory concessions. And last I checked, there are multiple fiber networks across this country, many local rings and they are provided by telecos, cable companies and others. Did you miss these improvements? Or are we still running on narrow band copper long haul lines with 56k dial up access?
What the FCC is doing is reclassifying it as a regulated service. Once that is done they are perfectly within their rights to regulate the shit out of it.
What gives the FCC the power to decide what is a regulated service? Only congress can give the FCC that power, and Congress has not. That's what all this talk about net neutrality in congress is about, some want broadband regulated whereas others do not.
So close, yet so far.
Nope, not close.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Here is where all of these arguments fall through. The evil "single-payer" system we want in health care mirrors another single payer system: your local fire department. I don't remember seeing very much anti-fire department posts on here, or really ever hear too many people complaining about that.
No that is where your argument, and understanding, fails. Single-payer health care insurance is a nationwide proposal. Fire departments are local agencies, and the Constitution of the USA don't not bar them. Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People specifically gives the power for fire departments to the states or the people. Now if each state, county or parish, or city were to come up with single-payer health care insurance I would not call it against the USA Constitution, though it might be against a state's constitution. That I don't know. Of course if a state, county, or city were to try to institute a single-payer system I would fight against it, but I would only argue it was unconstitutional if I found the state constitution said it was.
We all pay taxes to support our local fire department
So you even admit fire departments are local, not national. I have no problem with local taxes paying for local services. In the case of fire and police departments, even libraries, I don't have problem with local taxes paying them. Property taxes though not income tax. Roads can and should be paid for with user fees, perhaps a combination of fuel taxes and mileage taxes, the more you drive the more you pay.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Wow... just skipped right past everything else (where I was discussing how the best alternative is competition) to whine about the 1/100th of the people in the U.S. who have no competition in their market...
The solution the government should pursue is that of encouraging more competition; creating market conditions that make competition attractive.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
I work in the field, I know how it works. There is almost no portion of any fiber or cable system in the US that wasn't subsidized heavily by taxpayer money, through abatements or outright giveaways,and in exchange, the costs have continued to rise for the end user, and speed advances lag well behind the rest of the world.
Read your own post:
"Saying this I hope you don't think I oppose Franken simply because I am Republican"
... and then they built the supercollider.
Pretty much the same tactic left wing uses when they toss out "racist" and "Hitler/Nazi" comments.
I wish I had a dollar every time some left winger tossed out those terms.
And Obama has shredded the Constitution, as did his predecessors (Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson ...)
The whole "left vs right" thing gets old. Both sides are evil, and both sides shred the parts of the Constitution they don't like, to the point now where almost none of the Constitution is enforce, except the shell concept.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Net Neutrality is not about corporate control or government control. Net Neutrality is about no control at all.
The PROBLEM is that some people fear corporate control more than government control, and visa versa. These two are warring and in the end, we'll end up with government/corporate partnership sharing control, and we're just as screwed, perhaps worse.
Which is why we should be able to dissolve both quickly when needed.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
But forget broad statements about rugged individuals, let's be specific:
# Public education - a great solution to the cycle of poverty, reduces crime, creates opportunity
One, public education used to and should be local not federal. Two, I have no problem with public education though parents should decide where they're children go and who gets the funding. I support the freedom to choice where parents send their children. What I do not support is schools that discriminate or that teach and favor one religion getting any tax payer money. I even support cutting the property taxes, which is what should pay for education, of those who home school their children.
# Public infrastructure - roads and high speed trains enable commerce and travel, reduce congestion and pollution
The Constitution of the USA authorizes the federal government to build roads. Section 8 - Powers of Congress says "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads". The interstate commerce justifies the building of interstate highways, there can't be much commerce if the roads don't exist. However I'd prefer local governments paying for most roads. And those roads should be paid for with user fees such as fuel taxes and mileage fees, the more a person drives the more they pay.
Public health care - cheaper (by about a third), better care, and portable, which means you can go start a business with less worry
I call bullshit and dare you to prove public health care is both better and cheaper. When you're researching don't neglect to include rationing, how Canadians have to come to the US to get operations, and how even Middle Eastern sheiks come to the US for the same surgeries.
I'm not saying there isn't problems with health care in the US, there are plenty of problems, almost all created by government. First there is little to no competition in insurance. As I stated upthread, and elsewhere a bunch of tymes, each state says who can offer insurance in that state. Now that would have been an excellent way for the feds to use the interstate commerce clause, require states to allow interstate commerce. If insurance in one state is cheaper than in another anyone should be allowed to buy that insurance, but as it is now people can not cross state-lines to buy insurance. Also the government needs to give those people who buy insurance on their own, like if I were to go to Mutual of Omaha (MoO) to buy it, the same tax breaks businesses get for offering health insurance to employers. That's right, right now employers get tax deductions for offering employees insurance but I do not get the same deductions if I go to MoO on my own. That is government interference and is not a free market. It is government failure and not market failure.
You object to these things? You'd rather have the freedom of rotting infrastructure and poverty than build public works?
What I object to is you mixing different things and twisting things around.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
How many Federal Governments do you have to select amongst? How many local ISP's do you have to select amongst?
I have two. At&t or Comcast. Just like I have two parties to choose from, Democrat or Republican. So I actually have no choice for either.
How many Federal Governments have force to apply against you should you not comply with their rules? How many local ISP's have force to apply against you should you not comply with their rules?
Ever heard of the DMCA? The ISPs will use the government's force. Again, no difference.
You obviously don't understand proper English or rhetoric. You should have understood that I meant the person I replied to thought I was Republican. Over the past more than 10 years I have repeatedly said on Slahdot I was not Republican. Hell in the post you replied to saying I was Republican I specifically stated I was not Republican, that I voted for candidates from a bunch of parties as well as independents.
If you can't understand that don't bother replying, as I won't reply again.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Oh poor trollie, you STILL haven't figured out the math yet? Tsk tsk, I'm disappointed in you! I mean, surely there is a "statistics for dummies" book you could have perused by now? Well I understand, it is kinda hard for you to count only using your fingers and toes, especially with the tears in your eyes thanks to my cock slapping you in the face. Now pay attention, and learn! I'll even draw it in a nice simple picture format!
Now here is you...() with nothing but your magical woobie to protect your gaping hole from the train fucking that awaits it, and here is the bad guys....123498763487364983276492836 91827364981273649128764 981273649812736498127346 91823649812736498127364 18236491827639481263 9123874612938746219 9187236491287364981 9872634981263947 91827346912873469 9182743691827364 9128736491287364 91723469187236 91287364 91287364 91927346 91287364 1928734 691278364 912873 641927346 91287364917823491782 6491287364912634912873649128374619 91276349182 98712349
Now that is NOT to scale of course, otherwise your hole would be MUCH larger, and those cocks lined up to screw you would number...ohh around 230,000 at last count. Now pay attention trollie, here is the hard part! Of those 230,000 roughly 98,000 are what is known as transient avenues of attack, now I know that is a big word and hurts your little head, but what that means is a website could be dangerous right now...and now it is not...and now it is. A site can literally be "clean" and 2PM, be infected by 3PM, be clean by 4PM, and be reinfected by 5PM.
So it is actually simply trollie. For your magical woobie to work you will not only have to have EVERY site you visit that MAY OR MAY NOT be infected at that very moment in your magical HOPES file, but every single site they link to such as ad servers and your list has to be accurate to the minute or it is nothing but a woobie. So even if you subscribed to Securina and every single security site on the planet, and updated your woobie every single minute of every single day the math proves beyond a shadow of a doubt you WILL lose.
But you KNOW this already, don't you trollie? Or else you wouldn't be so desperate to get anyone to listen to your delusions. And the really sad part? You have bet your ENTIRE existence on a 20 year old tech nobody uses anymore! How fucking sad is that! It is like arguing for the superior sound quality of 8 tracks, or for the incredible versatility of the floppy disc. But answer me this trollie: If your HOPES file is so damned good why did everyone abandon them over a decade ago hmmm? The ONLY thing a HOPES file is good for anymore is for blocking ad servers, because their IP addresses never change unlike malware which changes by the minute. But here is your chance trollie, prove the math wrong. That is if you know how to do even the most basic of statistics. You DO know how to do statistics, don't you trollie? Because otherwise you are just praying to the magical woobie to save you, just like in my LOLCat example. Sad and pathetic, but cock slapping you is quite entertaining I must admit. It isn't often one gets to meet such a naive and easy mark. Poor little trollie.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The reason that happens is that Verizon, AT&T, etc. do it all. Ideally, the regulation would be simple:
1) Create two classes of companies: core infrastructure owners and ISPs. One side controls the heavy infrastructure, one focuses on the last mile and such.
2) By law, ISPs cannot compete with core infrastructure providers and vice versa. You must choose at the time of incorporation. Likewise, they cannot own stock in each other or share members of the same board of directors.
3) Exempt core infrastructure providers from antitrust regulations if they sell their services at a non-discriminatory rate. Meaning if Verizon sells bandwidth at the same rate to Comcast and FiOS Independent Internet, Verizon simply cannot be sued for antitrust at all in its handling of its services.
4) Require ISPs to provide all customers a list, written at a level appropriate for a high school level of reading comprehension, that clearly states all non-QoS discrimination they perform. Whenever they change the policy, such as to gouge iTunes or Netflix, they must inform all customers in writing, in the same level of language.
Please try again ok? What you are talking about is prevalent at all levels of urban development. Abatements and giveaways = regulatory relief and tax breaks. Check on the deals given to developers to build shopping centers, office parks, etc. Are you going to put the same income cap on them?
Please define what part of the infrastruture they have failed to improve? Are you on another planet? I was lucky to have an ISDN line in the late 90s before getting a whopping 368K dsl line at the turn. I now have 20/5 fiber. At my vacation home I have 4/1 service and am at a significant distance from the dslam. They are upgrading service to put in more fiber and where they have residents are getting over 12M. This is in a very rural area.
You speak of costs rising for the end user. Have they? Based on what metric and were you expecting that the cost to end users would drop to 0? From what I see low end offerings remain around $20/mo and higher end are $60 with choices inbetween. That seems pretty constant to my recollection of the past decade and speeds have done nothing but go up.
"For your magical woobie to work you will not only have to have EVERY site you visit that MAY OR MAY NOT be infected at that very moment in your magical HOPES file, but every single site they link to such as ad servers and your list has to be accurate to the minute or it is nothing but a woobie" - by hairyfeet (841228)
on Wednesday December 22, @02:24AM (#34638726)
That "woobie" IS actually "accurate to the minute" here, & 915,000 unique entries of KNOWN BAD SITES/SERVERS/HOST-DOMAIN NAMES... simply because I update it from sites that contain information on bad sites/servers/hosts-domain names, & they update 4 or more times a day themselves:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
http://hostsfile.org/hosts.html
http://hostsfile.mine.nu/downloads/
http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download
https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/monitor.php?filter=online
Spybot "Search & Destroy" IMMUNIZE feature (fortifies HOSTS files with KNOWN bad servers blocked)
And yes: Even SLASHDOT &/or The Register help!
(Via articles on security (when the source articles they use are "detailed" that is, & list the servers/sites involved in attempting to bushwhack others online that is... not ALL do!)).
2 examples thereof in the past I have used, & noted it there, are/were:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1898692&cid=34473398
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1896216&cid=34458500
So, as per usual? So much for that from you!
---
"You have bet your ENTIRE existence on a 20 year old tech nobody uses anymore!" - by hairyfeet (841228) on Wednesday December 22, @02:24AM (#34638726)
I think you had best check with places like mvps.org from my reputable sources list above, & their forums people as a counter-example... there are 1000's of them there alone & there are other sites like they too.
Then again also? There are testimonials like this one too:
"Ever since I've installed a host file (http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm) to redirect advertisers to my loopback, I haven't had any malware, spyware, or adware issues. I first started using the host file 5 years ago." - by TestedDoughnut (1324447) on Monday December 13, @12:18AM (#34532122)
FROM http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34532122
To further substantiate this for me (and as I said before here -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34612834 I can produce more like that quoted testimonial above)... he, like myself & many others, due to using hosts files, good sense, & layered security concepts, DO NOT GET MALWARE (which blows your points here http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34612834 away, with ease, right at their foundations!)
You still have not "debunked & disproved" my 20++ points in favor of HOSTS files here either:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34607890
Have you? Nope.
(Instead, all we get from you is easily disproven B.S. (via testimonials alone even), and foaming at the mouth hysterically utt
I'm glad you live in an area where they seem to have actually done something. Most of America doesn't. Around here, I have the choice of the same 768k DSL line I could have chosen 10 years ago, or Comcast. The Comcast service costs me nearly 100$ a month for 10mb/s.
I wonder if your good service has anything to do with being able to afford a vacation home? Since most people can't?
Yes, they have improved infrastructure where they had to, or where they could make the most profit from it, while leaving the majority of people behind, and they only improved that because they received many more times what the improvements cost from taxpayers.
Actually, for the most part, conservatives don't trust the government not to impose control over Internet content under the guise of "net neutrality". In the beginning the regulations will be very subtle, but they will establish the precedent for government regulation of the Internet. Then bit by bit the government will extend its regulation so that it will be harder and harder to get information from anyone other than the approved mega-corporations.
And this is different from the unregulated result of only being able to access content from approved mega-corporations (i.e. the ones who can afford to pay 2 or 3 times for the 'privilege' of having their bits delivered to a given ISP's hostages-I-mean-subscribers)?
As a relatively conservative person (morally speaking) with libertarian leanings in terms of individual freedom, the idea that corporations can be trusted to do anything OTHER than lie, cheat, and steal whenever they think they won't get caught becomes more and more laughable every day. We can't trust the large ISPs to do anything other than double dip as much as possible, attempt to legislate against fair competition while screaming bloody murder at any attempt to limit THEM through legislation, and generally betray every bit of trust we give them.
I'm not sure I government control of corporations implied. Corporate control of government seem as likely a result. But neither is implied. The operation of both the government bureaucracy in concert with corporations for the benefit of the state (read leader and his cronies/party) is a more succinct way of putting it. Transferring businesses to the government is a hallmark of communism. Transferring businesses that are not already controlled by loyal party members to loyal party members is more typical of fascism. But that does not result in government control. The businesses remain in private ownership. But it results in heavy party influence on the corporations, and corporate influence on the government through the party.
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